


OBVERSE VARIATIONS

by ivorygates



Series: Obverse Variations [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Girl!Daniel, genderflip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if it had been Daniel Jackson who appeared in Dani Jackson's universe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	OBVERSE VARIATIONS

1.  
Kelowna is an interesting and different sort of mission for SG-1. Sam pegs them as being at about the technological level of Earth from about half a century ago, which means that the _Goa'uld_ haven't been around for quite a while. Before they've been on-world half a day, they find that Kelowna is in a state of very uneasy peace with its two planetary neighbors, the Terannians and the Andari Federation. Naturally they're hoping that their new friends from Earth will be able to give them a competitive edge.

He's seen that so many times before, and it always makes him sad.

On their second day on planet, Daniel and Jonas go back to the science facility they've toured the previous day. He's still hoping to get through to Jonas.

But there isn't time.

He runs out of ... life. Makes a choice. The same sort of choice he's made hundreds of times before, really.

He stops the explosion.

SG-1 takes him home.

He doesn't feel dead.  
  
He is, though.

Terminal radiation poisoning.

There's no cure.

#

It's supposed to take him about fifteen hours to die.

It takes three days. He isn't really conscious for most of it. Hallucinating, he supposes. Oma comes to him. She offers him the chance to walk the Great Path.

To Ascend.

He doesn't believe he's worthy. He believes his life has been a catalogue of failures. Events beyond his control.

She tells him the only thing anyone can ever control is whether they are good ... or evil.

And so ... he Ascends.

#

But there are Others on the Higher Planes. Others with power to rival Oma's.

They don't want him there.

Nor do they want him to return to his own place.

He is cast out.

#

2.  
Kelowna is an interesting and different sort of mission for SG-1. The culture they encounter isn't at the mud huts and bronze swords stage for a change. More automobiles and airplanes. Sammy pegs them as being at about the technological level of Earth from about half a century ago, which means that the _Goa'uld_ haven't been around for quite a while. It was one of the places she'd uncovered with her cold dialing program. Both they and the Kelownans are very careful about making contact. They negotiated back and forth via MALP for about a month before stepping through, SG-1 having learned their lesson on Bedrosia. But the Kelownans are peaceful -- at least with regard to the SGC. Before SG-1's been on-world half a day, they find that Kelowna is in a state of very uneasy peace with its two planetary neighbors, the Terannians and the Andari Federation.

Their official minder is a young man named Jonas Quinn, attaché to First Minister Velis. Dani likes Jonas, but thinks he's a little naive. Among other things, though, he's the lead historian in charge of the excavation that's uncovered the Stargate, and General Hammond's given her permission to share some of her research with him. He's already gotten far beyond the basic stuff she's brought with her, though.

And the Kelownans are using the information they've recovered and translated to build weapons, using a new substance they call _naquaadriah_. It seems to be an unstable derivative of _naquaadah_ , from what Sammy can tell.

The _Goa'uld_ who used to run this place styled himself Thanatos. Greek god of death. Figures.

They're scheduled to spend the night here on Kelowna. But she wants to go home and bring back some more material for Jonas. For one thing -- and for once she and Jack are in agreement on something, for a wonder -- the idea of building a Really Big Bomb to protect yourself from your warlike neighbors simply isn't going to work. You have to use it at least once to convince them, and then, well ... then you've got the rest of the 20th century here on Earth. Maybe they can keep the Kelownans from making the mistakes they've made themselves.

So they Gate home to talk to General Hammond instead of spending the night as scheduled in Kelowna City. Jack teases her about her new boyfriend. She doesn't bother to dignify his comments with a reply. She thinks he's reaching, anyway. Anybody that far up on the scale of cultural development belongs -- by rights -- to Sammy, anyway. She gets all the low-tech crazies, weird alien princes, crazed bounty hunters, that sort of thing. Not a nice, normal, _sane_ bureaucrat like Jonas Quinn.

By the time they get the provisional okay from General Hammond, followed by the final okay from the Pentagon, and she pulls together the material she wants to bring -- which requires consulting the other specialists on 18, since she is _way_ out of her own field here -- and finds actual copies of the (government approved) books and papers to take through, SG-1 is four hours late for their return. Jack isn't a happy camper.

He's even less happy when they can't get a lock on the Kelownan Stargate.

They try for the next six hours.

No lock.

The seventh chevron won't engage.

Sammy can't figure out why.

So they write off Kelowna. Okay. Happens. And they'll never know what it was all about. That happens too. Maybe in a year or so they can get a ship there -- if the _Tok'ra_ are feeling generous -- and find out what happened. Or Sammy will eventually figure out why they couldn't dial back and fix it.

Meanwhile, it's not like she doesn't have work to do.

#

Monday morning. Bright and early. Dani hates bright and early. 0700, but SG-12 has a briefing in an hour and she's supposed to be there to see them off. She's just got time to finish her Starbuck's double espresso and go over her notes before getting down to the Briefing Room. After that, she'll go to breakfast. SG-1 is going through the Gate this afternoon at 1330, which means as soon as she's done with SG-12, she can prep her own team's mission, and if there's any time left over, there might be time to take a look at the photos of the stele from the ruined temple that SG-7 ran across on their last mission -- the one to PR5-839 -- and see if it's really as exciting as they say it is.

She slides her key through the lock and walks into her office.

There's someone standing behind her desk.

"You mind telling me what was so damned urgent?" she says. She hates people in her office.

"I... Ah... Hello?" He looks up.

She doesn't know him, though he looks faintly familiar.

"Yes," she says. "Hello. New? Lost?" Although it would take very special skills to get lost into her -- locked -- office. She walks over to her desk, sets down her cup.

SCG uniform. BDUs, meaning Gate Team, so she _should_ know him.

His shoulder patch says SG-1.

"Is this some kind of a joke?" she demands.

"Joke?" he echoes blankly. He just looks bewildered. He looks around. "I... died. I went through the Gate."

Okay. It's starting to make sense to her now. He's probably wandered out of the infirmary. He's close to Jack's size; if he got into Jack's locker looking for a uniform, that would explain both the flash and his access to her office, because Jack's keycard might have been in his locker and Jack's key is All Access.

"Why don't you sit down?" she says. "And tell me your name."

"Daniel," he says. "Daniel Jackson." He sits down carefully.

Daniel Jackson. Well, that's weird. Still, it's not an incredibly uncommon name.

"Hi, Daniel," she says gently. "I'm Dani. How'd you get in here?"

"I have no idea. Isn't this my office?"

"Ah... no. This is _my_ office. Now you stay right there, and I'm going to call Janet and we'll get this sorted out, okay?"

"No... wait. I went through the Stargate with Oma. Jack let me go--"

But she's already gone to the phone on the wall and started dialing.

"Infirmary."

"Hey, Janet. Lose something?"

"Dani?"

"You can call off the search. I've got your missing patient right here."

"Missing patient?" Janet says blankly.

Dani's stomach sinks. No missing patient?

Daniel Jackson has gotten to his feet and is wandering around her office again. He's picking things up and setting them down again. He looks puzzled.

"Janet, _please_ tell me you're missing a patient. There's a guy here in my office who says his name is Daniel Jackson who's talking about being dead and going through the Stargate, and I thought he was yours."

"Dani, I'm not missing anybody. Certainly not anybody named Daniel Jackson. I think you need to get out of there."

"Okay, Janet. I'll take care of it."

She hangs up.

"This isn't my office," Daniel says. He sounds aggrieved.

"No," she says. "It's mine. I'm Dr. Danielle Jackson, SG-1. Who are you?"

"No," he says, backing away and staring at her in horror. "Oh, no. This can't be happening. Not again."

"Daniel?"

The man looks as if he's on the edge of panic. He certainly doesn't look like any sort of threat.

"Daniel, it's okay. Talk to me."

"I'm Dr. Daniel Jackson," he says. _"I'm_ on SG-1. Or I ... was. I'm dead. I died. I remember dying. We went to Kelowna, and I died."

Kelowna?

He's backed all the way into a corner now, staring at her as if he's afraid she might attack him.

"It's okay," she says soothingly. "We'll fix it." God knows how. "Come on. Let's go see Janet." She walks toward him slowly, hands outstretched, the universal gesture of harmlessness.

He stares at her wildly.

"It's going to be okay," she repeats. She wishes Jack were here. Or Sammy. Jack is actually better at this sort of thing than she is; soothing terrified strays.

"What am I _doing_ here?" he demands. "I'm not supposed to be here!"

"We can fix it," she repeats. She wonders where he's supposed to be, and what it has to do with Kelowna. He shouldn't know anything about Kelowna. It's kind of classified. She hasn't even turned in her final report yet.

"Dr. Jackson?"

Suddenly there are two armed SFs inside the door of her office, and two more just outside.

Daniel flinches. She can tell he'd like to bolt, except that there's no place to run to, really.

"Wait outside," she snaps without turning around. "We're fine."

She hopes she's right.

The SFs, reluctantly, retreat.

She reaches Daniel's side, puts a hand on his arm.

His muscles are tense and he's shaking.

"I know this has got to be weird," she says quietly. She makes her voice as gentle as she can. "But SG-1 specializes in weird things, right?"

He looks down. Gives her a small tentative smile.

Odd. He wears the same style glasses she does.

"Yeah."

"We'll figure this out," she says with more confidence than she feels.

She tucks her arm through his and leads him out of her office. He comes willingly enough, to her relief.

The SFs follow.

#

"So... you're... me...?" he says as they walk. "I mean..."

She knows what he means.

She's had time to think about it, and she's pretty sure she has this figured out now. At least she has a theory, even if it's a wild one. Daniel Jackson, SG-1? It's bizarre, but it's possible, given what Sammy told her when Alternate Janet came through. If this man is really ... her ... they're quantum variations of each other. She's been to an alternate universe herself. She knows they exist.

Unless, of course, this is all some incredibly elaborate charade.

"I guess so," she says, answering his half-finished question. He's her, she's him, but... shouldn't they look alike, in that case? She can't really see the resemblance. And if he's supposed to be her, shouldn't they wear their hair the same, just to begin with? His is as short as Jack's.

They reach the infirmary.

"Wow," Janet says. She looks back and forth between them. Her eyes widen slightly as she takes in his uniform details. "I, ah--"

"I found him in my office and no, you _can't_ keep him." Honestly, Janet looks like she's about to trip over her tongue. "Just poke him full of needles or something, okay?"

"Gee, thanks," Daniel says. He seems to be doing better now. Getting over the shock pretty quickly.

Like someone who really _was_ SG-1 would.

"His name is Daniel Jackson," Dani says. "As in SG-1. He says he just got back from Kelowna."

"The ... resemblance is really amazing," Janet says.

Dani nods, just as if she believed her. Better than getting into an argument.

"Dr. Jackson," Janet says to Daniel. "Do you recognize this place? And me?"

"You're Dr. Janet Frasier," he answers. "This is the infirmary at Stargate Command. I've spent a lot of time here. Too much, in your opinion. And mine."

Janet smiles at him. "Well, you'll be spending a little more this morning. There are a few tests I'd like to run. You should be familiar with them. And some questions I'd like you to answer for me, if you can. And ... Dani, don't you have somewhere to be?"

Several places, actually, and she can't be in all of them at once. "I'd better go let General Hammond know," she says. Something, anyway. As much as she knows, which isn't much.

How did he get into her office without a quantum mirror?

And she's going to be late to brief SG-12.

"I'll see you later," she tells Daniel.

#

It's 0730, and General Hammond is already in his office, of course. She tells him that when _she_ got into _her_ office half an hour ago there was a man in it who -- as far as they can tell so far -- seems to be a male version of her. He's offered no explanation for how he got there, except to say that he went to Kelowna and died, and that Jack let him go through the Gate with someone named Oma, and that he has no idea of how he ended up in her office. Janet is running tests on him now, to find out, among other things, if he's a quantum double.

General Hammond asks her to keep him posted.

She makes the briefing for SG-12 only a few minutes late. She has to wing it, but probably nobody notices. After SG-12 leaves, General Hammond tells her that in light of the Daniel Jackson problem, he's scrubbing SG-1's mission today. Just as well.

She stops by the infirmary on the way to breakfast. Daniel's in a bed, in a set of scrubs. They've taken away his uniform for analysis. They're doing a DNA sequence, which will take a couple of hours to show results. Janet tells her the two of them -- she and Daniel -- have the same blood-type, the same allergies, are on the same medications, have the same dental work, and most of the same scars.

Peachy.

"The good news is, if he's really your quantum double, he doesn't have anything to worry about," Janet tells her.

"Why not?" Dani says.

She remembers when Janet's double came through the mirror. After 48 hours they were desperately looking for a way to get her back to her own universe, because the interloping double couldn't survive in the same universe with ... herself.

"He's male," Janet says. "It's really Sam's field, but I'm guessing it makes him non-identical enough that he should be able to stay here as long as he wants."

Which is a good thing, since they haven't got a quantum mirror any more and she can't even begin to imagine how they'd find his universe to get him back to it if they did have one, just to begin with.

"Have you told him?" she asks.

"General Hammond would prefer I didn't discuss his situation with him until we've ruled out all the possibilities," Janet says carefully.

Dani looks at her, puzzled.

"We know that a number of organizations have very sophisticated cloning technology," Janet adds. "Not to mention the nanite technology to artificially age a clone."

"So they decided to infiltrate the SGC with a version of me who's _male?"_ Dani says. "Yeah, that's going to go unnoticed."

She throws up her hands and goes over to sit down next to Daniel.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi."

"They treating you okay?"

"Oh, you know, except for the armed guards and the fact that nobody recognizes me..." He shrugs.

"Yeah, well, as soon as Janet's done with you I'm pretty sure General Hammond's going to want to talk to you. We were supposed to go offworld today, but that's been postponed."

"Because of me."

"Pretty much."

"I don't know what I can tell you..."

"Oh, I'm sure Jack will think of something."

For some reason, her mentioning Jack's name seems to startle him. He looks up at her, blinking.

Eyes the same color.

Would she really look like that if she were a guy?

He's really kind of ... cute.

"Jack?"

"You've _got_ to remember him. Tall guy, pain in the ass, leads SG-1."

"He's not that tall," Daniel says.

Maybe not from where Daniel stands. But Daniel has a good few inches on her, too.

"Well, you'll probably be seeing him later. Anyway, I gotta go. They've probably already heard rumors. You know how gossip is in this place."

He grins at that. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For believing I'm me."

Oddly enough, she's never doubted it.

#

It's a top-security facility and nobody's supposed to tell anybody anything at any time -- including, she sometimes thinks, the time, date, and the weather topside. Despite which, Jack, Sammy, and Teal'c all know she found a _doppelganger_ of herself in her office this morning.

"So what's he like?" Jack wants to know as soon as she sits down.

"Taller than I am," she says, reaching for her coffee. She wishes she'd gone back to her office for her espresso, but it's probably cold now.

"And dead?"

Jack has either already been in to see Janet or -- more likely -- General Hammond.

"Recently. But he got better. That's nothing out of the ordinary." She's been dead five times now by actual count. She tears open the syrup packet and pours it over her waffles.

"In an infinite number of universes, every possible variation of reality -- and us -- should -- theoretically -- be possible," Sammy says, looking interested.

"So there's a universe in which I'm male -- as we've now seen, and you're male -- which would be weird -- and even one in which Jack is Jacqueline, which would be--"

"Inconceivable," Teal'c says smoothly.

She looks at him. He regards her blandly.

Did he just make a joke?

Maybe.

"Oh, so not going there," Jack says hastily. "But what's _he_ doing _here?"_

"We don't know that yet," she says patiently.

Jack stares at her as if she's supposed to know everything that a male version of her is thinking.

"He doesn't know either," she offers.

She knows he was scared.

It bothers her.

She never wants anybody to know when _she's_ scared.

#

Okay, what he _does_ remember clearly is dying. That _hurt._ And he remembers the part where he chose to go on. To Ascend. Because he thought that by Ascending he could make a difference in the world. Make all the difference he'd tried to make in life and somehow doesn't think managed to make -- though his friends, at his deathbed, said otherwise. He'd cherished a hope that, freed of so many earthly constraints, released into a larger world, he could finally... do good.

What he had not meant, intended, or expected was to find himself ever-so-mortal again, confronting a female version of himself in an alternate universe.

Did he actually ... Ascend?

He doesn't remember.

He remembers asking Jack to stop Jacob/Selmak from healing him.

He remembers standing in an office that was almost his own.

Nothing in between.

Fortunate to have had two experiences with the quantum mirror. The idea of an alternate universe isn't really a shock.

Though seeing himself as a woman is.

_Danielle_ Jackson, SG-1?

If Jack had hated taking _him_ to Abydos, he must have really hated taking a female version of him.

Maybe she'll tell him about it later.

Janet is kind, but she treats him as if he's a stranger. He tells himself that he _is_ a stranger to this Janet, but it still bothers him.

Eventually they give him clothes -- not his own; a jumpsuit -- and escort him down to the Briefing Room.

SG-1 is there.

An Alternate Universe SG-1.

They all look exactly the same.

Except that his place at the table is already filled. By a woman. Danielle Jackson.

It's funny how everything is relative. Her hair is short for a woman (though not for the Air Force). For a man, it's fairly long. It is, in fact, pretty much the way he wore it up until a couple of years ago. And their glasses -- his and hers -- are identical.

Different universes. Same fashion choices. He wonders what else is the same.

But he doesn't remember having kept it combed so determinedly into his eyes. The woman looks like a sheepdog. A rumpled one. She looks -- now that he's getting around to noticing things -- like she's slept in her uniform, and he's pretty sure it's a size too big.

No makeup. No nail polish. Sam wore both, even through the Gate. He used to tease her about it sometimes.

Not his counterpart, apparently. _Au naturalle_ all the way.

She really looks like ... a geek. And about twelve.

He knows how Jack O'Neill feels about geeks, at least in his universe.

"Sit down, Doctor, ah, Jackson," General Hammond says.

Jack makes a faint rude noise. That hasn't changed.

He sits.

"Dr. Frasier has already given us her report," General Hammond says. "It seems that you are, in nearly all respects, identical to our own Dr. Jackson."

"Other than that _guy_ thing," Jack says.

"And we're hoping you can shed some light on the reason for your presence in her office."

He sighs. "I wish I could, General. About four days ago SG-1 went to P3X-4C3. While touring a research facility there, I contracted a lethal dose of radiation. I ... died."

"You got better," Jack says.

He shakes his head. "Not that I know of."

"Well, _we_ went to Kelowna too, about the same time," Danielle begins.

"Indiana--"

"Jack--"

Indiana? Jack calls his _doppelganger 'Indiana?'_ That's ... strange.

"Need to know."

"Well, he needs to know. And we need to know what's going on."

The arguments are familiar, at least. And she obviously isn't in the least cowed by him. She's pushing about the way he did. Though there's something a little different about it.

Jack looks at General Hammond. She does too. She pushes her hair up out of her eyes.

"Please, sir," Danielle/Indiana says. "This may be our chance to find out what happened on Kelowna. Besides, he's _me._ You're not going to question my loyalty to the Stargate Program after five years, are you?"

"For crying out loud, Indy, he's _not_ you--"

"Well, he could be. Somewhere else. In fact, he _is,_ somewhere else. He's SG-1, too."

Jack stares at him as if he finds that slightly more unbelievable than the fact that he exists at all. As for him...

Is his counterpart actually _wheedling_ Jack O'Neill? And _General Hammond?_

"Dr. Jackson? Your considered opinion?"

He's about to reply when he realizes that General Hammond isn't talking to him.

"Daniel's no threat to us, sir," she says.

"Colonel?"

"We can always lock him up somewhere if we don't like his answers, sir," Jack says with a sigh.

"Very well. Go ahead, Dr. Jackson."

"We went to Kelowna four days ago. We came back after the first day because I wanted to provide the First Minister's attaché, a man named Jonas Quinn, with some additional reference materials -- they were building a bomb from a new material they'd discovered--"

" _Naquaadriah_ ," he says. "They were building a _naquaadriah_ bomb. We didn't come back after the first day. We stayed overnight in Kelowna City. On the second day, I went back to the facility with Jonas. I was trying to explain to him that building a bomb as a deterrent force wouldn't work."

"Yes," Danielle says, nodding. "That was what I'd come back here to get the reference materials for. I hoped that if we showed the Kelownans how our own history had gone, they'd see that form of deterrent wouldn't work and abandon their program. But by the time I'd gotten the reference material together and we dialed back to Kelowna, we couldn't get a lock on their Stargate. We haven't been able to figure out why."

He smiles bitterly. "The second day I was there, their prototype bomb -- you must have seen it on the first day -- went into overload. I stopped it from exploding by removing the core. The technicians all died of radiation poisoning. So did I."

"You're looking very lively -- for a _corpse,_ " Jack says.

"So in our world their bomb went off," Sam says slowly. "Because... Dani wasn't there? An explosion of that size would bury the Stargate -- if it didn't destroy it completely. That could be why we couldn't get a lock when we tried to dial back in."

"Let's get back to the 'dead' thing," Jack says.

"SG-1 was allowed to bring me home on compassionate grounds," he says. "Janet managed to keep me alive for three days. Oma -- Oma Desala -- came for me. She offered me Ascension."

His counterpart is looking at him blankly.

"When you went to Kheb..." he says, but then the sense of what he's saying catches up to him and he stops.

Went to Kheb looking for her wife's son?

_Her_ wife?

"Kheb?" she says blankly.

"Tell me about Sha're," he says urgently.

"My sister?" she says, recoiling.

_Sister?_

"This is starting to get really complicated," he says.

"Ya think?" Jack mutters.

"Kheb is the Jaffa paradise," Teal'c says. "Its location is unknown. The Jaffa believe our souls ascend to Kheb and freedom when we die."

"No," Daniel says. "It's a real place. I've been there. I can take you there."

"Oh, I don't think so," Jack says.

"I think we may be wandering a bit far afield," General Hammond says.

He can feel the suspicion building in the minds of the people at the table across from him. All but Danielle. She just looks puzzled.

"You were dying of radiation poisoning," Danielle says. "And Oma Desala came to you and offered you Ascension. You'd met Oma Desala before, on one of your trips through the Stargate. To a place called Kheb."

"That's right."

It leaves out a lot, but Jack really doesn't look like he's in his happy place right now, and Danielle can obviously read Jack O'Neill like an open book. Daniel knows that Danielle has no idea of what she's talking about, either. But she has all his skills. She knows where the words go in the sentence and she'll figure out what they mean later.

It's the way you begin a translation.

"And Ascension cured your radiation poisoning?" she continues.

"Not exactly. In Ascension, you leave the burden of the physical body behind. I did. I must have. But I don't -- honestly -- remember anything between Ascending -- agreeing to Ascend -- and ending up in your office. Alive again."

"Convenient," Jack says.

Danielle glares at him. Daniel thinks she might actually smack him if she were close enough. And if General Hammond wasn't watching.

"I'm sorry," he says. "This is all I know."

They look at each other, and at him. All equally puzzled, now. But Jack thinks he's the enemy and Danielle doesn't. It's the usual split for SG-1. At least one thing is familiar here.

"If I could just go through to Kheb -- try to find Oma again -- talk to her-"

"I'll take that under advisement, Dr. ... Jackson," General Hammond says. "We've prepared guest quarters for you where you can rest comfortably. These gentlemen will escort you there now."

He knows he's being dismissed. He gets to his feet. Armed SFs are waiting for him.

He follows them out.

#

"Oma Desala? Ascension? Kheb? Have you got _any_ idea of what he's babbling about?" Jack demands, the moment Daniel is gone.

"Not yet. But I will," she answers.

Jack makes a disgusted face.

"Look, obviously it's a lot more complicated than him just dying and showing up in my office. Why did he bring up Sha're? Although the fact that he even knew about her is just one more proof that he _is_ who he says he is."

"Or read your personnel file."

"Which doesn't explain why he's got my DNA."

Well, most of it.

"The NID could have cloned you."

"And flipped my sex? Besides, Janet ruled out a clone. Look, he'll tell me the address for Kheb. We'll send a MALP and check it out, just like we would any other place. And I'll talk to him. We've got to send him home, Jack, wherever it is. Maybe Kheb's the way."

Because they've destroyed their quantum mirror. And she doesn't think that even Sammy could build another one.

"Or maybe it's a trap."

She sighs. "Yes, Jack," she says in long-suffering tones. "Maybe it's a trap."

"Well until we have a better idea of whether it is or not, we will be proceeding with extreme caution," General Hammond says. "Dr. Jackson, the first order of business is to get those coordinates. Dismissed."

#

It's one of the rooms reserved for visiting dignitaries. But the door is locked from the outside, and there are guards.

A cell is a cell is a cell.

It bothers him, but what bothers him more is that it doesn't bother him as much as he thinks it ought to bother him. It's not, after all, as if he has any pressing engagements elsewhere. He's dead. This is just a puzzle -- half intriguing, half annoying. Why is he here and not on the Great Path?

And how much does he care, when all is said and done?

He gets approximately ninety minutes to brood over it before someone comes in. His counterpart. Of course they'd send her.

She's carrying a tray.

"I wasn't sure whether they'd thought to feed you--" she says, setting it down.

"Well, they told me I could ring for room service, but I, ah, hadn't actually gotten around to it."

She grins at him.

Odd to see himself as a woman. She's actually sort of ... cute.

And how narcissistic is that?

"Don't worry, Daniel. We'll get you to Kheb. It might just take a while. You know the military."

He sighs. He's banged his head against the military mindset from Day One here -- well, _there._ He feels bruised by the constant collisions by now.

"Coffee," she says, inspecting the tray just as if she weren't the one who has provided it. "I brought a carafe. Tuna sandwiches. And they had chocolate chip cookies, so I brought a bunch. I hope... I just assumed we liked the same things."

"Right so far. What do they want?"

She sits down at the table and pours herself a cup of coffee. Gestures for him to join her.

"The address for Kheb. I've never seen Mr. T so twitchy. He doesn't talk much about Jaffa religion -- the real kind, not the stuff the _Goa'uld_ make them do."

"'Mr. T' ... _Teal'c?_ "

She nods. "Even if you'll give us that, I still don't think General Hammond will let you go through, though. Not at first. But eventually. What are we going to find there?"

"A temple. A monk who speaks in Zen _koans._ Oma Desala. I hope. Do you know what ... General Hammond ... is going to do about me?"

"Well, when Janet and Kawalsky came through from the Alternate Universe, we granted them asylum. Then we found out they -- well, Janet -- couldn't survive here. Probably you went through the same thing. Janet and Sammy don't think you'll have that problem. You and I aren't all that genetically identical. So--"

"Wait. _Janet_ came through here? Not Sam?"

"No. Sammy had to stay and defend the Mountain. The General couldn't just leave, you know."

"Sammy -- Sam -- was the General in your -- other -- there?"

"I guess they don't match?" she asks.

"Um... In ours, Sam came through with Kawalsky. She was a civilian. Dr. Carter. Jack was the General."

Danielle makes a rude noise. "Saucy Jacky make General? Can't see it."

Sammy, Mr. T, and Saucy Jacky? He isn't just in an Alternate Universe. He's in Looking-Glass Land.

"Well, it's good to know I'm not going to die," he says, sticking to essentials.

Considering that they destroyed their quantum mirror after that, and he's assuming they did the same thing here.

And besides, where would he go when he died this time?

"And that you can stay as long as you need to," she adds.

"Here?" he asks, looking around.

"Oh, I'm sure they'll let you out of here eventually. You can come live with me. There's plenty of room."

Live with _her?_

"On Mainland Street?" he asks.

She frowns. "You didn't move?"

He looks blank. She sighs. "After that whole thing with... Oh, you remember, the _Goa'uld_ pleasure palace, and the light..."

He nods.

"I tried to jump off my balcony," he says quietly. "Jack stopped me."

"Well, I couldn't stand that place any more after that. So I moved. Lower floor. No balcony. But it's huge. I've got the whole floor. You're welcome to stay. Until you ... go."

He's grateful to her. More than he can put into words. For her belief that he's him. For her confidence that he won't be here forever.

He needs that, he realizes. The last time he was in an Alternate Universe, no one believed he was him. She's apparently believed it from the moment she saw him.

Of course, having been to an Alternate Universe before does help.

And he's always been the one who takes things on faith.

He comes over to the table. Sits down. Pours himself a cup of coffee.

"Danielle--" he begins. She raises a finger.

"Dani," she says firmly. "And you're ... Daniel?"

He smiles reflectively.

"I haven't been 'Danny' for a long time." Except to Jack, who calls him 'Danny Boy' at the oddest moments. "But down there in the Briefing Room ... Jack called you 'Indiana'?"

She smiles back. "Steven Spielberg has a lot to answer for. Not you?"

He shudders. "No, thank god." 'Spacemonkey' had been bad enough.

"Oh, I don't know," she says quietly, staring down into her coffee. "It's kind of nice."

And that's when it hits him, with the force of a revelation. The kind of revelation that usually comes at two in the morning and lets him solve a page of recalcitrant alien hieroglyphics at a glance. Back home, for years, he'd watched Sam and Jack -- his two best friends -- do a sort of bizarre conflicted non-mating dance around each other, wrapped up in feelings they couldn't admit, even to themselves. Because of Fraternization Guidelines. The difference in rank. And the fact that Sam practically had to neuter herself to have a career in the Air Force at all.

But he hasn't seen any of that here.

Not between Sam and Jack.

"Dani, are you and Jack _dating?"_ he blurts out before he thinks.

Even though it would actually be impossible.

"What the _hell?"_ She's out of her chair -- more as if she's been zatted than asked a simple -- though rude -- question. Her coffee's gone flying. She swears -- fluently -- and runs for a towel.

"I'm sorry -- I'm sorry--" he says, as she mops up spilled coffee. He's not sure why the volume of coffee increases exponentially when it leaves the cup in a spill, but it seems to be a universal constant.

"I didn't mean to startle you," he says.

"Why?" she asks blandly. "Were you and Jack dating where you came from? He'll love to hear it."

It's her -- his -- snake-baiting expression. She's recovered her composure. And lost her temper. He can tell.

_"What?_ I-- _No,_ I mean, I--"

"Because I can pass the word, but you know, you're going to break a lot of hearts. I think Janet's all ready to ask you out. Or, you know, _in._ "

Now this is definitely overreacting. Okay, he was out of line, and it was a too-personal question, but still...

"It's really none of my business," he says.

"Whether I'm shagging my team leader? Well at least I wouldn't be gay. Which would be a nice change. Usually people assume I'm doing Sammy."

He thinks of landmines. He's just stepped on one. An alternate universe, but not quite a mirror image. Or an identical copy with one minor change, which has actually been his assumption up until this point. What the hell is-or-isn't going on here to earn him this kind of reaction?

"Yeah, okay. Well, I'm not gay either. Or dating anybody."

And she's done an excellent job of moving the subject off of something she really doesn't want to talk about, hasn't she?

"Hard to find somebody to date when you work eighteen hours a day in the up-and-coming field of cryptographic analysis of deep space telemetry. So. Are you going to give us the address for Kheb?"

And so much for that nice rapport they'd been developing.

"Sure."

She takes the coffee-soaked towel into the bathroom to rinse it. He hunts around for paper and pencil. Finds them. Sketches out the seven symbols quickly. Tears off the sheet. Hands it to her when she comes back.

"This is what you want."

She glances at the paper, tucks it into a pocket. Studies him. Not the way he'd ever look at anyone. She looks as if -- for the first time -- she's trying to figure out if he's a threat. Almost the way Jack would look at someone. Sizing them up.

It's weird, because she's small and slender, and he -- well, he shed his geekboy image a long time ago in self-defense. Those workouts with Teal'c certainly helped. It's not like he's ever going to be able to take out Jack in a fair -- or unfair -- fight, but five years of going through the Gate and mandatory gym time -- and combat training -- have gotten rid of the skinny academic who went to Abydos pretty much once and for all.

But he'd almost swear she's trying to decide whether she could take him in a fight. A physical one. And deciding that she can.

He realizes that she reminds him of Sam. That same sort of ... confidence. Because Sam never had to worry about being jumped by somebody twice her size -- or, more precisely, about what would happen after that happened. Sam can handle herself in a fight.

Oh, this is just too peculiar for words.

He wonders what she's thinking, and what she sees.

"People just... They talk about us a lot. SG-1," she says at last. There's a faint hint of apology in her voice. And puzzlement. He's SG-1. He knows she believes that. She doesn't expect the same thing from him that she gets from ... outsiders.

He knows, and he's sorry, even though it wasn't gossip but epiphany that prompted his remark. SG-1 was always the number one hot topic at the SGC. Including, of course, his sexual preferences or lack thereof. He'd gotten used to it. Stopped hearing it.

He wonders if it's worse for a woman.

Sam never said.

He owes his counterpart ... something. Even if he's not sure what.

"I know. It's just... You know, you're _me._ In a way. And Jack and I..."

The way they were together. Fighting constantly. But nobody he trusted more to keep him alive. Just not to see what was most important, sometimes.

"Different?" she asks.

"Very," he says fervently.

She relaxes. Hearing what she'd prefer to hear. Pats his arm, sitting down again. "Oh, Daniel, you just have to keep him a little off-balance, or else you'll never get him to do a single thing you want. Today in the briefing, he was all set to be stubborn and clap you in irons. So I poke him a little. That's all it is. Sammy can't do it. She's got the whole Air Force thing going on. But I'm a civilian. I've got a lot more latitude. You remember when we had to get the Tollen out of here?"

Invoking their shared history.

"Yes," he says. "I had to do it, because I couldn't be court-martialed."

"It's exactly the same thing."

It isn't the same thing.

But he realizes, now, that she can't see it. Or doesn't want to see it. Or refuses to admit it. So he lets it go.

Same mating dance, different players.

A little creepy, considering that one of them is a version of him. He wonders if Jack is interested in her the way the one he left behind is interested in Samantha Carter. There are some things Man was not meant to think about.

"So is there anything else you want to know?" he asks.

"Tell me about Sha're," she says. Asking.

They end up talking for hours. About Sha're. Skaara. Abydos. Their -- differing -- pasts. Eventually Sam -- Sammy -- comes to find her.

Dani leaves. She promises to come back.

#

She comes back after dinner. That gives him several hours cooped up in a room almost thirty stories underground set up for visiting VIPs: no television, and a selection of books which mixes popular fiction and great literature. Those he hasn't already read, he doesn't want to.

He lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling.

He's been given something most men would sell their souls for: a second chance at life. And he isn't quite sure what to do with it. What he wants to do. What he should do. For that matter, what he's _supposed_ to do.

And, of course, what he's going to be allowed to do.

At dinnertime an airman brings him a tray. The food's just the same here as in the world he left, which is obscurely comforting.

A few hours later, Dani enters, escorted by two other airmen. Her arms are full of books. The airmen are carrying shopping bags. They set them down. She sets her burden down as well, shoos them out.

"You're still here?" he asks, getting up. It's after 2100 hours. Well after the end of the work day.

"Went shopping. Came back," she says.

Shopping?

"Brought you some stuff to read -- current journals -- some blank journals, too -- some books -- a laptop from Stores -- you won't be able to access the mainframe, but you can work on this if you want to -- snacks -- chess set -- and some decent soap, shampoo, and moisturizer, because Janet says we have the same allergies, and..."

And the stuff stocked in Guest Quarters makes his skin itch and gives him a blinding headache. And she'd know that. He glances away, feeling oddly shy.

"Thanks."

"General Hammond is getting authorization from the Pentagon for you to ... stay," she says.

He nods. He'll need that, even though he hopes it's only temporary.

Doesn't he? "Kheb?" he asks hopefully. Maybe his answers are there.

Again.

"The coordinates you gave us are viable. General Hammond is scheduling a MALP to go through next week. Based on that, we'll be going through. SG-1. We can use anything else you can give us -- maps, terrain, you know. And, you know, more information about these ... Ascended."

"I'll do what I can. It's going to take a while."

She sighs. "Oh, it's not like I need to sleep."

"You should go home," he says.

She cocks her head. "Been talking to Sammy and Janet? They're always telling me that." She brandishes a folder that was still tucked under her arm. "I've still got this data from SG-7 to go over. And then prep for today's mission, which has been rescheduled for tomorrow. So I figure I'll catch a couple of hours up on 14 and I'll be fine."

Level 14 is the bunkrooms. He stayed there when he first came back from Abydos.

"Anything I can help with?"

She opens the folder, hands him a photo. She shouldn't, and they both know it.

"Seen anything like this before?"

He studies it. It's a closeup of a section of a pillar. It's covered with deeply-incised symbols.

"Ancient writing," he says.

"Which will take weeks to translate, and I'll never be sure I've got it right. And I haven't got the time, and so on."

"I'm not that bad at Ancient," he offers.

She smiles, and takes the photo back. "I know," she says. "But we need to get you out of here, not get you in trouble. Just as soon as General Hammond gets the okay, though, come work for me, okay?"

Of course she'd be the head of the Archaeo-Linguistic department here. But it's still a little odd to be asked to come work _for_ her.

"Sure."

"So why don't _you_ get some rest? Because once they let you out of here, I don't plan on letting you have any." She tosses him a two-fingered salute -- it's rather more like Jack than anything he'd do himself -- and leaves.

He doesn't, though. She's brought him exactly what he wants. He reads -- and writes -- deep into the night.

#

The next day he's called into General Hammond's office. Dani and Jack are both there.

Jack doesn't look happy. Dani is doing her best to look bland, but he can tell she's excited.

General Hammond tells him the Pentagon has offered him asylum. They're not completely happy with his story though. It has a large Kheb-shaped hole in it. They want to find out more about these creatures called The Ascended, who have apparently cured his radiation poisoning and moved him from his universe to theirs for reasons unknown.

Well, he'd like to know why that happened, too. It isn't what Oma promised him.

Meanwhile he's being attached to Dr. Jackson's department.

The _other_ Dr. Jackson.

#

"So I'm free?" he asks her, as they leave General Hammond's office. Jack has stayed behind. Probably to complain. Or -- more charitably -- to put his reservations about the situation on record.

"Still confined to Base," she says. "I'm working on that. You can work out of my office until we get one set up for you. I've moved in another desk and set up a second computer. You'll need all my notes if you're going to work on the Ancient project, anyway."

#

It's disconcerting to be in her office. Because it's like -- and unlike -- his own.

He never had a shrunken head collection.

Or a collection of stuffed toys. Camels. Beanbag Pharaohs. A green lamé scarab beetle. A teddy bear dressed as Indiana Jones. A cloth version of William, the blue faience hippopotamus.

A coffee mug that says 'Archaeologists Do It In The Dirt.'

But the rest of the stuff is his. Or at least, things that he remembers. But this isn't his world.

He gets a quick crash course in that when Sam stops by to see how he's settling in. They do the polite thing -- she congratulates him on joining their SGC and asks him what he's working on -- then goes over to where Dani's working, crouched over her computer. SG-1 has a mission this afternoon and Dani's doing the same prep he would be.

And first Sam ruffles Dani's hair -- which probably explains some of that sheepdog look, because it honestly doesn't look as if she ever combs it -- and then slips an arm around her waist to lean in over the screen to see what she's working on.

From the way Dani reacts, this is perfectly normal behavior. She actually leans back against Sam.

If he and Sam had ever done anything like that, the whole Base would have been sure they were, well, an item. So to speak. There'd been gossip anyway.

And Dani was _complaining_ about people thinking she was doing Sam?

But it's when Jack shows up about an hour later that he gets a real shock.

Jack is a toucher. Always has been. People, things. He walks into her office and -- of course -- heads straight for the most enticing object, a clay tablet in fragments laid out on a piece of cheesecloth on her worktable. The camera is set up over it and she's studying the enhanced and magnified image on her computer screen.

"Don't touch that," she says, and when he doesn't back off fast enough to suit her, she picks up the nearest available object -- it's the stuffed scarab -- and lobs it at him with unerring accuracy. It hits him square in the chest.

"I wasn't touching," he says, holding the scarab.

"You were thinking," she says, getting up.

"You're late. We've got a briefing."

"I am _not_ late," she says. She sounds indignant.

Jack glances at his watch, setting the scarab down. "You're _about_ to be late," he clarifies.

"Not late yet."

"Going to be."

Jack obviously doesn't see him -- his desk is out of line of sight -- and Dani has apparently forgotten he's here. This seems to be an old and time-honored -- ritual, in fact -- argument between the two of them.

She picks up her briefing book. "You know, after five years, I really can find my way to the Briefing Room by myself."

"And after five years, you still haven't learned how to tell time."

Jack drapes an arm around her shoulders and ushers her out of her office.

Touching.

Daniel stares off into space.

Not like his SG-1. They're very close. They treat her like ... a pet. He's not sure whether he should be outraged on her behalf or not. She obviously doesn't mind.

She's got two more doctorates than he does. Anthropology and Ancient History. And speaks a dozen more languages. That came as a shock. Is the team dynamic different because she's a woman? _That_ different?

Obviously she pulls her weight. She wouldn't be on SG-1 if she didn't. And General Hammond asked for her opinion about him in the debriefing. And accepted it.

Okay.

But if everything's so touchy-feely -- and it obviously is -- and they aren't making a huge secret of it -- which they don't seem to be, as there are security cameras in her office, and somebody, somewhere must review the footage -- what made Dani react so ... badly ... when he suggested that she might be dating Jack?

Which she couldn't be, anyway, because of the Fraternization Guidelines, civilian or not.

Needs more study.

So does this translation.

#

By the end of the first week he's here, she's pretty tired of the way everything female on the Base -- even Sammy -- is hanging around Daniel Jackson. As if he's God's gift to womankind. Because he's still, when all is said and done, Alternate Her, and it just makes her ... twitchy. Because, after all, _she_ doesn't get that kind of response from the _guys_ on the Base, does she?

The only consolation -- and it isn't exactly a consolation, because it isn't really helping matters -- is that Jack really isn't warming up to him at all. And Jack is going to have to like him, and trust him, if they're going to get him through the Gate to Kheb.

She sort of wishes they won't -- or, really, that he won't want to go. Because for the first time in living memory, she's getting caught up on her department's work. Because, oh god, Daniel is just brilliant. He's fast, he's good, he never makes mistakes. She never has to tell him anything twice. He's clearing out a backlog of projects that have been hanging around for months.

She can talk to him in a way she's never been able to talk to anyone in her life.

She likes him.

She hopes he likes her. All of them, really. Because Kheb may just not ... pan out.

He's finally explained the whole thing about Kelowna and afterward to her. She has all the facts, but somehow, it doesn't make sense. Why would he want to leave his team? His Sammy, his Jack, his Teal'c? Jacob/Selmak was healing him. There was a chance he could have lived.

_She_ would have taken it.

She's asked. There really isn't anything they don't talk about. He said he could do more good on The Great Path.

Yeah, it's English, but it still doesn't make sense.

He loved Sha're. He married her. Sha're was taken as a host. He searched for her for years. She was forced to bear Apophis' child, a _harceisis_. She died the final death. Isn't losing one family -- two, if you count his (their) parents -- enough?

Apparently not.

He found it very odd that she was going to marry (more or less) Skaara. Even odder that his Sarah was her Simon. Not as odd as she finds the fact that he kept leaving the SGC.

Must be a guy thing.

#

They're all -- meaning SG-1 -- poking at him like he's some sort of strange museum exhibit. Trying to decide how to fit him in to their world. He supposes he might do the same, in their place.

Jack isn't, though.

Jack is pretty much still treating him like an Enemy Alien, which he suppose is par for the course. Jack was always SG-1's designated cynic and paranoid. He was the optimist, Sam always jumped in with both feet, and Teal'c was, well, _Teal'c._

That seems to be pretty much the same here.

Both of them -- Sam and Teal'c -- have accepted him as another -- peculiar -- version of Dani. Well, pretty much. Teal'c has wanted to talk to him about Kheb. He's certainly willing to tell him everything he knows. His SG-1's mission to Kheb with Master Bra'tac isn't duplicated here.

Teal'c invites him to _kel'no'reem._ He knows it's an honor, and treats it as such. He's done it before. Apparently it's also a bit of a test, because Dani's done it, and Teal'c wants to see if he has, too.

Teal'c also, apparently, wants to know what his intentions are toward his counterpart.

They're all so protective of her.

He finds himself saying a lot to Teal'c. Maybe more than he should, but Teal'c always was easy to talk to. He talks about the differences between his SG-1 and hers. How he's come to worry that they treat Dani like some sort of brilliant idiot child. That they don't really respect her. And she deserves their respect.

"Was your SG-1 not also a family, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c asks.

"Well..." Sam had called it that. And he supposes in a way it was. The closest thing to one he had, anyway. But still, he'd thought she was exaggerating a bit.

"You do not believe that we value all of Danielle Jackson's skills. You do not yet know her. Come. I will instruct you."

#

After they've finished _kel'no'reeming._ , Teal'c takes him down to the gym, to one of the practice rooms. Dani's waiting for him. She's in workout clothes, wearing head and chest protectors. She's holding two of the wooden Jaffa practice staffs.

"You're late," she tells Teal'c.

"I was delayed."

She glances over Teal'c's shoulder. Sees him.

"Daniel. You should get changed. I'll get another staff."

He doesn't know anything about Jaffa staff combat. Apparently she does.

"I think I'm just here to watch," he says.

"Off the mat, then," she says.

He goes over to the bench and sits down.

Teal'c goes to face her. She bows. He bows. It's the last thing remotely formal or decorous Daniel sees for some time.

They start slowly, warming up, and for a few minutes Daniel thinks Teal'c's going to go easy on her. He's seen Teal'c do practice drills with his staff weapon before, and recognizes the forms. But soon they're both moving faster and faster, fighting all-out.

She's good. For a human, she's probably very good. But Teal'c's twice her size. There's no way any human can match a Jaffa's speed and strength, and Teal'c has been doing this since before her -- their -- grandmother was born.

She is not in the least afraid of getting hit.

She tries for a disarm and fails. Her weapon goes one way and she goes another. Teal'c's hit her hard enough to knock her flying. When she hits the ground, Teal'c pounces, one foot on her chest, his weapon at her throat.

_‹"Yield!"_ ›

For a moment, Daniel actually thinks she'll refuse. But then she slaps the mat. Submission. Teal'c helps her up. She's gasping for air and looks a little dazed. But she's grinning.

"Almost had you, T."

"Indeed, your skills continue to improve, Danielle Jackson."

She rubs her hip, shaking her head to clear it. "Oh, I am _so_ going to have bruises in the morning."

"If you possessed a symbiote, such matters would not be a problem for you."

"Yeah, well, the whole 'eating for two' thing could get really old, you know." She stretches. "Ow. Give me a minute and we'll do some quarterstaff. Or... Daniel, are you _sure_ you don't want to try?"

"Um... I've never done anything like that in my ... life." Run and shoot, yes. That he's done a lot of, over the years. He's even punched out a few people. Nothing like what he's just seen.

"Really?" She looks surprised.

He shrugs. He's an archaeologist. A translator. So is she.

"I could teach you," she offers.

He waves a hand, not sure what his answer to that is. She turns away.

She and Teal'c rack their Jaffa staffs and pick up two quarterstaffs. He watches as they spend the next half-hour practicing with quarterstaffs. Right out of Robin Hood.

This time, fortunately for his nerves, it _is_ practice. They're not trying to kill each other. She's showing Teal'c some moves that seem to be just for fun; he can't imagine using them in a fight. Like starting with the quarterstaff on the floor, picking it up with one foot, sliding it across your shoulders. It almost seems like baton twirling. Drum majorette stuff.

Until, just at the end, the two of them put all the moves together for a moment. And it becomes a _kata,_ as the sticks swirl around each other at speed, leaping up and sliding over each other before they both set them down.

Teal'c bows. She bows.

"You're getting better," she tells him.

"It is an odd thing to fight with trees, Danielle Jackson," he responds. From the tone of things, it's an old joke between them. A Jaffa joke.

"Yeah, well, sometimes trees are all you've got."

"Indeed. A true warrior makes use of the materials at hand."

She racks her quarterstaff. Pulls off her padded helmet and her plastron and puts them away. Her hair is dark with sweat. Her t-shirt is molded to her body.

She comes over to the bench where he's sitting and picks up her glasses. Grabs the towel waiting there and scrubs off her face, then drapes it around her neck. Puts on her glasses and reaches for the bottle of water also waiting for her. He can feel the heat radiating off her body. She's panting. She stretches and drinks, completely oblivious to his closeness.

"Shower," she says, walking off.

Teal'c is looking at him. He knows that look. He's just been ... instructed. And he suspects he's learned exactly what Teal'c wanted him to learn.

Not a child and not a doll. Just a different way of relating to her team. She fights like a wolverine, and obviously that's what they expect of Dr. Jackson in the field. They rely on her, just as -- his -- SG-1 relied on him.

And there's obviously a nice little womanly body under those baggy BDUs.

What the hell is he thinking?

Death has obviously driven him crazy.

#

Daniel used to think he was a workaholic.

Well, okay, he _was._

But by the time he's been here seven days, he realizes that his overachieving _doppelganger_ (four doctorates? Nobody needs _four_ doctorates) has him beat. Twice now he's come into their office in the morning to find her asleep at her desk.

"Hey, Jack's going to kick you off SG-1 if you keep this up," he says. He touches her gently to wake her. The last time he shook her. She woke up swinging, and nearly hit him.

They're different.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she mutters, sitting up.

"Not funny," he tells her.

She sighs and gets up, stretching. "Well, I'm going home this weekend. I'll sleep then."

Today is Tuesday. The weekend is three days away. And she'll only be going home -- and sleeping -- if she isn't offworld on a mission.

When she stands up, he sees what she was working on. Her desk is covered with photos. There's an image frozen on her computer screen.

"You went to Kheb?" he asks excitedly.

"A MALP went yesterday, but we couldn't get the computer time to download the transmission on wideband until around midnight, so I stayed to review the footage. Sammy will be looking at the science when she gets in. What time is it?"

"0700." He hasn't really been sleeping well.

"She might be looking at it now. The MALP didn't go very far from the Gate, though. Not far enough to see your temple."

He knows that. He's told them it's several kilometers from the Gate. He's done his best to draw them a map that shows them its location.

"Daniel... I know we'll be going. But not soon."

"How soon?"

He hears himself snap at her, and wishes he hadn't. But his answers are there. It's the only place they can be.

"Another week. Maybe. And you know you can't go with us."

He isn't cleared for Gate travel here.

"I know."

"I'm working on it."

"I know."

"Go bother Sammy. I'm going to shower."

"And pretend you went home last night?"

"Yeah. Keep my secret?"

"This time."

"Good lad, Daniel Jackson. I'll catch you down on 19 and we can go get breakfast."

"See you there."

She waves, vaguely, as she leaves the office. Still, really, half asleep.

He studies the still images on her desk for a moment. They're just the same as he remembers. Kheb.

He goes down to Sam's lab.

"She didn't go home last night, did she?" Sam greets him as he enters.

"And what time did _you_ get here?" he responds. It isn't quite an answer.

"Five-thirty. But I went home last night, cooked dinner, _ate_ dinner, worked on my bike--"

"Talked to your plants--"

Sam flashes him a grin. The fact that he knows her -- because he knows another version of her -- just entertains her. Where it drives Jack O'Neill quietly crazy.

"--talked to my plants. Why don't you come over and see them?"

"Your plants?"

"You've got to be tired of the commissary food by now. Or aren't you?"

"Trick question?"

"Dani thinks of it as fine dining."

"I don't."

"Then come to dinner."

"I assume you're still a good cook?"

"Haven't poisoned anybody yet."

"There's the little confined-to-the-Base problem."

"Well, we've got the telemetry back from Kheb, and I'm going over it now, and it seems to check out, so I don't really think we'll have a problem with you leaving the Base, so long as one of us is with you. I'm sure we can get General Hammond's permission by Friday. And something for you to wear, of course. I promise not to let Dani do the shopping, either." Sam sighs.

"What's wrong with the way she shops?" Daniel asks curiously. He's never seen her in civilian clothes, of course. But _he_ has no problem shopping.

Sam just rolls her eyes.

They turn to the telemetry on Kheb.

#

Friday. General Hammond's okayed Daniel's release from house arrest. Sammy wants to have him over for dinner. Sammy actually wants to have him as the main course, Dani thinks, but Sammy invites her too. She's gotten his sizes, and Sammy has shopped, so he has civilian clothes to wear off The Mountain. Plus, actually, the start of a wardrobe. Sammy never does anything by halves.

She thinks Sammy is taking the opportunity to dress Daniel -- who can't object, because he isn't there when the clothes are bought -- because Sammy can't dress her. They had that fight and Dani won it, years ago. She has no desire to be a girly fashion plate wearing shoes she can't walk in. There are times and places for that. Very few of them.

None where she'd want to be seen by her friends.

At least Daniel is safe from dresses and high heels. Lucky Daniel. But she looks through Sammy's purchases when she drops them off in his quarters Friday morning. (Safe enough, as Daniel's already in her office.) A pair of jeans. A pair of dressy slacks. _Honestly, Sammy._ A couple of Oxford cloth shirts, one blue, one white. A sweater in a darker blue, and another one, heavier, in a sort of nubbly oatmeal color. The blue one is wool -- but it's lightweight -- and the oatmeal one is cotton.

Doesn't the woman know it's March outside and the man's going to freeze?

Loafers. _Yeah, great for snow._ Socks. White t-shirts, because all the military-issue from Stores here is black or khaki and apparently that wouldn't fit in with Sammy's fashion vision.

Gloves. _Practicality rears its head at last._

And a ... _black leather jacket?_

Oh, this is taking things way too far.

She wonders how much it cost. Sammy's removed all the price tags.

The leather is buttery soft. It's the same style as her own stadium coat -- so at least Sammy hasn't lost her head completely and tried to do him up as a biker -- with a zip and snaps, so it will probably be warm, and it's lined in Thinsulate, so it's at least barely practical.

But _really._ It reminds her of those rituals where the sacrificial victim is lavishly ornamented before...

Well they're both adults. And if Sammy harbors an illicit passion for Dani's quantum double, all she has to say is that Sammy had better be prepared to come across with full details afterward.

#

"Sammy left you clothes," she says, coming into her office.

"Um?" Daniel says. He's copying out SG-7's inscription onto the blackboard, glancing down at the photograph in his hand as he does. Once he's done that, the next step is placing the preliminary translation below the glyphs.

"So you can change before we go." She doubts he hears her. She isn't surprised. She'll remind him later.

She turns to her own work.

#

"'Beware the darkness within,'" Daniel says.

"Okay," Dani says.

"No. That's what this stele says. I think. Or maybe 'above.' Something about bewaring darkness. And the Ascended. Dani, it talks about the Ascended!"

" _Are_ there Dark Ascended?" she asks with interest.

"I have no idea. I haven't finished this yet. I just need to--"

"Leave."

"What?"

She walks over, takes the chalk from his hand. "Friday. 1700 hours. Dinner date."

He stares at her blankly, mouth hanging open.

"Sammy will kill us," she tells him persuasively. "Both of us." If she lets Daniel blow her off to stay her and work on this monkey-puzzle.

"But--"

"Daniel, I _promise_ you it's going to be here on Monday. Or even tomorrow. Come on. Fresh air. Sammy's house."

He blinks. She watches as his mind slowly returns from the place they both go when they're working on a problem like this. She spent the afternoon on reports for just this reason. He focuses.

"I suppose," he says reluctantly.

"New clothes," she coaxes.

#

She waits for him at the elevator. Sammy has already gone. They'll meet her at her place. Jack walks by, on his way out for the weekend.

"Actually going home?" he asks.

"As soon as Daniel gets here," she says. "Dinner at Sammy's."

He cocks an eyebrow at her. He was invited, but declined. "You _sure_ this is a good idea, Indy?"

"Jack, it's been ten days and he hasn't tried to take over the SGC once."

And Daniel's impatient about the mission to Kheb, but it's apparently a low priority in the SGC's mind. They'll probably be going next week. She hopes so, and that they find the temple, for his sake. But even if everything's exactly as he says it is, getting permission to take him through is going to be another uphill battle.

"Yeah, well, maybe he's just being sneaky. You are."

"Not," she protests.

"So don't _sneak_ back here until Monday. Go have some ... fun."

"Fun?"

"Don't make me make it an order."

"Right. Fun."

"Fun is good." He steps into the elevator.

She stares at the closing doors and sighs. She hadn't actually been planning to come back here this weekend, but now that Jack has said she can't, coming back suddenly seems like the most desirable thing on Earth.

Of course, if she does, he'll know. Somehow. And depending on how much he dislikes the idea, will find some way to make his displeasure known, up to and including mandatory downtime. Which might mean postponing the Kheb mission, because that's one they can't do without her.

Daniel arrives, carrying the leather jacket. Jeans. Oatmeal sweater. Loafers. He looks sort of...

God.

Men get all the breaks.

Sammy's going to eat him alive.

"You know," he says, "I had a sweater just like this back... Everything all right?"

"Fine," she says. She doesn't know whether she wishes she could look like that -- the equivalent -- or not.

No one to care.

#

When he meets her at the elevator, Daniel has a feeling he understands Sam's remark about clothes now.

Dani's still dressing the way he did when he was a student living on grants. Well, if he'd been colorblind. And he's pretty sure most of the clothes she's wearing would actually fit _him_.

A pair of battered tan workboots; if he didn't know they couldn't be, he'd swear they're the same pair she was wearing when she was hired to crack the Coverstone. A pair of baggy green corduroy pants that are more than a bit too long. A navy cable-knit sweater that comes to mid-thigh, with a brown plaid flannel shirt under that, and a green turtle-neck shirt -- in a shade of green that clashes with the pants -- under that. A tan and navy stadium coat -- he used to own the same one -- that looks as if it would fit Jack. And -- sort of the crowning absurdity -- a red knitted tam-o-shanter with a white pom-pom.

The best-educated bag lady on Earth.

They go topside.

He recognizes her Jeep -- same color, same model as his. She drives; he doesn't have ID yet. There are a couple of stops to make. She's bringing drinks and dessert. They stop at the bakery first, pick up a cake. It's snowing, but only lightly. Then on to a liquor store.

"Sammy wants me to buy wine," she mutters as they go in. "I have _no_ idea what to get."

"Not a wine drinker?" Maybe not a drinker at all. He's starting to realize it's best to check every detail rather than making assumptions.

Landmines.

"Beer," she says firmly. She glances at him. "I don't suppose you have any idea...?"

"It kind of depends on what she's serving," he says.

They buy a six-pack of beer, a bottle of Scotch -- Jack's brand, now that's interesting -- and two bottles each of a good red and a good white, as Dani has no idea of what Sam has decided to cook. He makes the selections.

"You drink wine," Dani accuses.

"Guilty," he says, shrugging. "Never did like beer, much."

For some reason it goes to his head faster than anything else. One bottle and he's dizzy. Two, and he's expansive. Three and up, and, well, better not to think of those occasions. He's cheerful, and he lectures.

"Beer is food."

"To the ancient Egyptians."

"It replaces B vitamins and electrolytes."

"So does Gatorade."

They load the box into the back of the Jeep and drive to Sam's. It starts to snow more steadily.

They pull up in the driveway. Same house. He carries the box of bottles, she carries the cake. When Sam opens the door, they step inside. He follows Sam into the kitchen and sets the box down on the counter. She lifts out a wine bottle, glances at him, raises an eyebrow.

"I picked the wine."

She smiles at him. It's Sam's smile, but Sam never looked at him that way. He's a stranger to this Sam. Not a member of her team.

"I'll show you where you can hang up your coat."

"And... thanks for the coat. And the clothes."

"All part of our service to stranded interdimensional travelers," Sam says.

Dani's hanging up her coat when they get back to the living room. He hears Sam stifle a faint sigh.

"Want me to go home and change, Sammy?" Dani says. She sounds faintly belligerent. Apparently she's heard Sam's sigh too.

"Beef Wellington waits for no man -- or woman. But honestly, Dani. I thought you'd gotten rid of that sweater."

"Oh, come on, Sammy, who sees it?"

"And that hat?"

"It was a present."

"Obviously from somebody who doesn't like you very much."

"Fine."

She pulls off the hat, then strips off the sweater, wads the sweater around the hat, and tosses both of them into the bottom of Sam's coat closet.

"Better?"

Well yes, in the sense that she now looks more like the lead singer in a grunge band and less like a bag lady. The shirt's only a size or two too big.

Sam smiles repentantly. She doesn't want to hurt her friend's feelings, but, equally, she doesn't want her to _be_ hurt by the world going around dressed that way.

Dani was carded in the liquor store.

"Oh, Dani--"

"C'mon, Sammy. Nobody hired me for my looks. They hired me because I could read pre-Dynastic Egyptian. And I wear uniforms all day. I'm going to go get a beer."

"I'm sorry," Sam says to him when Dani's left the room. "You might have guessed we have this discussion a lot." She shrugs apologetically.

It's odd. Half the time they completely forget he's there, and the other half they can't stop staring at him. It gives him an odd window on their interactions.

"I used to dress the same way," he says. "It's the 'starving student' look."

"But she makes good money!" Sam protests fiercely. "She makes more than I do, to be perfectly frank. If she'd just--"

"Sam," he says carefully, "she doesn't care."

Or cares too much. It's got to be one or the other. Nobody gets to be their age, his and hers -- 31 -- in their particular complex of specialties without understanding human cultures and human interactions, even if from the perspective of an outsider.

He knows she's had two serious relationships -- Simon and Skaara. Both Simon and Skaara became hosts. Skaara was saved, but he went back to Abydos to marry, and she stayed with SG-1. Simon/Osiris is still out there.

"It's a shame," Sam says wistfully. "At least you don't have the same problems."

With clothes, he supposes she means.

But clothes are the least of his problems.

After that -- possibly -- rocky start, the evening goes smoothly. Sam is delighted -- and Dani is stunned -- to find out that he cooks. He's drafted to help out in the kitchen. He makes the salad while Sam finishes up the other preparations. Beef Wellington is a temperamental dish. Dani stands in the doorway, drinking beer. He and Sam open the wine.

Sam is flirting with him. It's very clear.

He knows exactly how the rest of the evening could go -- he's sure, for that matter, that Dani is too. Sam will offer to run him back to the Base, since her house is closer than Dani's apartment. Dani will leave. And he -- eventually -- won't leave.

He's really not sure how he feels about that. The idea of it. The thought that Sam could plan it. Or think of it. In relation to him.

It's Sam. And it isn't. He's really never thought about Sam that way. _Ever._

#

Their dinner conversation is easy and fun. Except for the fact that his _doppelganger_ is there -- though he's glad of her presence -- and the fact that Sam is certainly _interested_ in him, it could be any Friday night when he dropped over to Sam's instead of going home. Because the gossip from the Base matches. The gossip from SG-1 matches. Current events from outside The Mountain match. The only thing that's different, out of place, is him.

Sam's taken apart that big Indian of hers again. She's got an eye on a new -- meaning vintage -- Harley that she might buy to restore. She's looking forward to the start of the motocross season, and hopes her schedule will allow her more time to compete.

After dinner they take their cake and coffee into the living room. He has an uneasy sense of being ... stalked.

He wonders what it would be like. It's nice, even flattering, to be wanted, though more than a little weird for it to be Sam. But there are real limits to what he'll give up in the name of pure research. So all he has to do is figure out how to get out of this situation gracefully. And tell Dani he doesn't want to go out on any more dates. At the moment Dani and Sam are having a lively -- and completely non-verbal -- conversation about him -- he can tell that perfectly well.

Unfortunately, he can't decipher it.

#

Sammy thinks her new boy wonder is really cute, but Daniel is seriously not interested, which is just too bad. He likes Sammy well enough, but every time she does the flirt thing, you'd think he'd suddenly gone gay.

He didn't leave someone behind in his own world. She knows that. He was married to Sha're, but she died the final death two years ago.

Still, even if Sammy isn't going to get lucky -- which, Dani thinks, would be a little creepy, all things considered, Sammy shagging her quantum double -- Daniel's good company. It's a fun evening.

"So, any plans for the weekend?" Sammy says, over cake. "Other than, I suppose, sneaking back to your office and working."

"I'm banned from the Base until Monday," she answers grumpily. "Jack nailed me at the elevator." She looks at Daniel. How is she going to get him back on Base without going back on Base?

If things had worked out here, Sammy could have driven him back tomorrow. Or even later. She can already tell they aren't going to, so if she asks Sammy to drive him back tonight, that will just be awkward.

Before she can work out any more possibilities, Daniel settles matters.

"I guess that stele can wait until Monday," he says. "And you said you were going to show me your place."

She nods. She glances back at Sammy. Sammy shrugs, conceding defeat. Or at least a temporary setback.

They leave soon afterward.

It's still snowing.

#

On the way into downtown they stop at an all-night drugstore so Daniel can pick up a few things to tide him over until he can return to the Mountain or -- possibly -- do more shopping. Dani has extra toothbrushes, but he needs a razor. Shaving cream. Underwear. She's the one who remembers to buy a sports bag to hold them. At the last minute she adds a pair of sweatpants to the cart. He checks the size, and exchanges them for something that will actually fit him. Apparently she buys everything a minimum of two sizes too big.

"Sorry to maroon you," she says, when they get back into the Jeep.

"It's actually nice to get into the outside world for a change," he says. "And it didn't seem to be your idea."

"Oh, he takes these fits," she says.

#

Their destination is unfamiliar -- he expected that, from what she'd said. It's a few blocks from his old apartment. The building is only four stories tall.

They take the stairs. There's no elevator. She has the whole top floor.

The walls are painted jade green. Most of it seems to be one big room. Bookcases divide it off into areas. He recognizes his family furniture. The artifacts he collected. His mother's piano.

Their mother's piano.

"Bathroom's through there," she says, pointing. "The other door leads into the bedroom, so ... I guess we'll just have to keep both doors shut and knock, since there's only the one."

He's used to the dance involved in sharing a shower room -- the Base only got separate shower rooms for men and women a couple of years ago -- so that won't be a problem. And you lose a lot of your modesty, false or otherwise, between archaeological digs and spending a lot of time offworld on a mixed-sex Gate Team. He nods.

"And there's a daybed in the office. I know you hope you won't need anything more permanent."

The office is up near the front door, a large alcove behind a set of curtained French doors. There's a computer, a desk, a daybed. Comfortable enough.

And he _does_ hope he won't need anything more permanent. Because he hopes he'll be going...

Where? Not home, certainly. On? But it's no longer the heat of the moment, he's not dying right now, and he's not completely certain about anything any more. He sets his bags down on the daybed.

"Coffee," she says.

He follows her into the kitchen.

It's spacious -- the last tenant obviously had gourmet aspirations -- but all of Daniel's pots and pans are missing. The only appliances on the long sweep of dark granite counter are a toaster and a coffeemaker.

She _did_ say she didn't cook.

He opens the refrigerator curiously. Pizza. Takeout Chinese. Bread. Butter. Milk. Orange juice. Beer. Coffee. A lot of bottled water.

That's all.

"If you're looking for actual food, you probably should have stayed at Sammy's. She does a nice breakfast," Dani says in neutral tones. She reaches past him, grabs the coffee and a bottle of water.

"Sam and I never..." he says.

"Not your Sam," she offers. She pours the coffee into the coffeemaker, adds the bottled water. The brewing cycle starts.

"A lot alike," he says.

"Likes you."

"And I like her. But I've worked with her ... counterpart ... for five years, and there's just, you know, when people work together for so long I guess maybe they stop seeing each other that way. Or maybe they never start. Because even though Sam is smart, and funny, and talented -- and beautiful, don't forget -- I just don't think I would -- or could -- ever see her as anything other than my ... friend."

"You just stop seeing people at all. Poor Sammy. I'll just let her know you're never going to see her that way. It'll be easier for everybody."

With a sudden horrified sense of impending disaster he sees the direction this conversation is taking. But there's nothing he can do about it. It's like sliding on ice.

Landmines.

And he should leave it alone -- stop talking right now -- but he can't.

"But of course, I mean, it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes it goes just the opposite way. You develop really deep... And actually a lot more than friendships, when you come down to it, because of the shared experience. And people who ... work together -- especially in jobs like ours -- they, well, it--" He's babbling. On _three glasses of wine?_

She looks directly at him -- _into_ him -- and it's like an electric shock. He knows that she's followed his entire train of thought: everything he's said, and hasn't said, and why he's said it.

"Jack doesn't want me," she says, in the tone used for making simple statements. Like that Apophis is on his way to destroy the Earth. Or that you've been exposed to nine grays of radiation and are going to die.

She turns away and walks out of the kitchen. Daniel stares after her.

She's just cut out her own heart and handed it to him on a plate. He'd been so cocksure, so arrogantly certain, that first night, that she was willfully blind to her own feelings. In error. Confused. Determinedly misled.

None of that.

He understands now why she's so touchy on the subject of dating, possible or otherwise.

What he can't understand is how she can manage to be as easy with Jack as he's seen, since apparently this is tearing her apart.

He stands there for several minutes, watching as the coffee finishes brewing. Then goes to find her. She's in the bedroom. She's changing clothes.

His first, wildly-irrelevant, thought is that she _does_ know how to buy clothes that fit. But these aren't clothes, of course. It's a costume.

She has the slip on. The dress is laid out on the bed. The slip is black and it clings. A lot of lace. She's wearing stockings. Nylons. Black nylons. The dress is blue, shiny, short, and when she's got it on she's going to look like a hooker.

"I'm going out," she says without turning around. "I'll be back tomorrow morning, by noon at the latest. I can drop you back on Base then, if that's what you want."

"Where do you think you're going?" he demands. Knowing he sounds a little too much like an outraged parent for anybody's good.

She turns around. He can see the edge of a brassiere beneath the slip. It's black lace, too. Nicely fitted.

"I'm going out to a bar to pick up a man for meaningless casual sex," she says bluntly. "It's Friday night. It's still fairly early. I should be able to manage. I won't be bringing him back here."

He feels like she's hit him in the stomach. "I-- What-- You're-- Do-- Does anyone know?" he finally manages to say.

Her mouth twitches slightly. "With my security clearance, I'm sure someone knows, Daniel. It's not the first time I've done this. No one's ever said anything to me."

Not the first time? His counterpart cruises bars for casual sex?

His counterpart is in love with Jack O'Neill.

"Look," he says desperately. "Back where I ... come from ... Sam and Jack, they'd, they -- they _feel_ things for each other. Things they _can't_ feel for each other. Because he's her commanding officer. And they're both in the Air Force. And they don't talk about it. But I'm pretty sure they both know. And I think you're wrong that Jack doesn't care. I think he feels the same way about you -- here -- that he feels about Sam there."

She turns her back. Picks up the dress. Slides into it. Wriggles to settle it.

"Look, what do you want? The white picket fence? The two-point-five children?" He's trying to imagine what she wants from -- with -- Jack, and he just ... can't. The man is a troglodyte, for god's sake. He loves him like a brother, but not a brother he can imagine having a substantive intellectual conversation with.

He can still remember the life he planned and hoped for with Sha're. This isn't even remotely similar. Is it?

"I can't have children," she says without turning around. "The _Goa'uld_ are very inventive."

"Which _Goa'uld_?" Because as far as he can tell, every event in his life has an analogue in hers, and he can't think of anything comparable.

"Doesn't matter." Which means she doesn't intend to tell him. Or pursue this conversation, either.

She walks into the bathroom. He follows. It's huge, as elaborate as the kitchen was. Stall shower. Jacuzzi. A wall of mirrors, two sinks, lots of counter space. There's a cosmetic box here -- alabaster, Fourth Dynasty. She opens it. Its contents are entirely modern. She begins to apply them, painting her eyes, gold and blue and black. The style is more Egyptian than contemporary, but when she's done, she certainly doesn't look like a little girl any more. Or a teenaged boy.

"Don't do this," he says quietly. "Please."

"What?" she says, her voice harsh and bitter. "Go out and have _fun?_ Behave like a normal person? Have a _real life?"_

He's lost count of the number of times people have said that to him, in all its variations. _You should get out more, Daniel. Go have some fun. What are you doing this weekend, Daniel? For crying out loud, Danny Boy, you really need to get a life..._

"This isn't what you want," he says.

"You don't know what I want," she says.

It isn't true. He doesn't know her as well as he expected he would at first, but there's no one in a better position to figure her out. She wants to be loved. Everyone does. It's pretty universal. But there's actually always been something more important to him -- and so, he thinks, to her.

"You want someone to love," he says.

"Everything I love dies," she says, picking up the lipstick. She twists it open. It's red, brighter than blood.

"Then I should be perfect," he answers steadily.

"Oh for crying out loud, Daniel, are you offering yourself up on the altar of duty to keep me from playing Astarte in Babylon?" she demands, turning around to face him.

But he's already seen this defense mechanism and it isn't going to work this time. He doesn't say anything. Just walks over to her and takes the lipstick out of her hand. Sets it down on the counter. And kisses her. Only their lips touch.

He feels her shudder with response.

Wrong on so many levels. Perverse on so many levels. Better than what she's going to do.

"I don't love you," she says, breaking the kiss.

"That's all right," he answers. He isn't really sure he's capable of ever loving anyone again.

It's clear she has no idea, really, of what to do outside the ritual script of a bar pick-up. He'd much rather take her to bed than Sam, but he doesn't feel a sense of urgency about it. And he'd prefer, all things considered, that she wanted to go to bed with _him_ than just anything male because she was having a bad ... life.

So he tells her the coffee is ready and he's going to go get some.

He pokes around the kitchen cupboards. They're pretty skeletal. Sugar. Peanut butter. Cereal. Power Bars. Candy bars. Cookies. Raisins. Pretzels. Canned milk. Emergency candles. Two bottles of Scotch, a case of beer, and a bottle of Spanish brandy. He takes the brandy and the candles out into the living room. Moves the pile of journals from the coffee table to the floor and sets the candles and the bottle down. Goes back into the kitchen. They both keep their matches in the same place; in the silverware drawer. He goes back out and lights the candles. Goes back into the kitchen for the coffee.

When she comes out to join him she's washed off her makeup -- a good thing; she looked a bit too much like several of the _Goa'uld_ he's met for his taste -- and has gotten rid of the mantrap dress. She's wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a plaid flannel bathrobe over them. Not exactly the costume for a seduction, but she looks real. She looks like Dani.

He likes Dani.

She regards the candles with raised eyebrows. "And this would be...?"

"A seduction," he suggests. "Because I'm really trying to get away from the feeling I'm supposed to leave the money on the dresser in the morning."

He watches her consider and reject several possible responses before deciding that silence is the safest one. She comes over and sits down on the couch. He turns out the lights. The room is lit only by candles now.

"So," he says, sitting down beside her. "Does Sam know?"

"What?" she asks, her voice suspicious.

"That you've ever worn a dress?"

"Not _that_ dress," she says, sounding relieved and amused. "But I've got suits for formal occasions -- meeting the President, the Russians, the Tollen, you know -- and some dresses for ... funerals. But why should I?"

Wear a dress, she means. Look like a woman. What's the point?

After Simon Gardner, what's the point?

He opens the brandy, adds some to both cups, hands her one.

"I don't know," he says. "Why should you?"

Silence for a few moments.

"So how do -- did -- you dress off-duty?" she asks, her voice slightly challenging.

"Oh, about like this. Not much for jeans, though."

"Sammy's always trying to get me into jeans," she says, as if it's a personal insult. "And then she wants me to buy a nice blue sweater. Well, I bought a blue sweater, and she didn't like it."

"That thing you had on tonight?" he guesses. Not, he thinks, what Sam was thinking of, even if it had fit.

She shrugs. "They sent the wrong size. It was too much trouble to return it. I hate to shop. It takes up so much time." She sips her coffee, staring off into space.

"Hire someone."

"What?"

"You don't clean this place, do you? I never cleaned mine. I tried -- once -- and landed in the Infirmary. You can hire people to do anything. Just tell them the sizes and what you want to buy."

"Anything?" she asks dubiously.

"Khakis and plaid flannel shirts."

"You think I'm a geek."

"You _are_ a geek. We're both geeks. I'll geek you in 23 languages. It's not a bad thing to be. The world needs geeks."

"Doesn't want them," she says.

Doesn't want her, he knows she means. And not the world. Just one man.

Who -- as a matter of fact -- he thinks she's crazy to care one way or the other about, at least in a candy and kisses and happily ever after way. Because Jack O'Neill is a fine human being -- in his military fashion -- and Daniel's best friend -- at least somewhere over the rainbow -- but he certainly isn't somebody who can make _Danielle_ Jackson happy.

Is he?

Can't be. Whether he wants to or not.

"The world never knows what it wants or it needs," he says firmly. "You can't let yourself care." He puts an arm around her shoulders -- because this _is_ after all, supposed to be a seduction, or at least a distraction -- and she doesn't object.

"So tell me how you stop," she says.

"I'm still trying to figure that out," he answers.

This time, hesitantly, she kisses him.

#

_'Coffee-flavored kisses, and a bit of conversation.'_ It's a line from a song that was popular when they were children. It describes the night. Coffee, brandy, and candlelight. Kissing. Just ... quiet.

It doesn't have to go anywhere, and it doesn't. They're not hormonal teenagers. She becomes preoccupied with trying to translate 'studmuffin' into Ancient Egyptian, anyway. She fails, but manages a passable rendering into Classical Greek. The Greeks had their minds in the gutter most of the time, anyway. Well, between that and inventing civilization. The parts the Romans didn't.

Cuddling is nice. Kissing is nice. It's almost as if they've been allowed to skip all the awkward introductory stages of the relationship and move right on to the part where there's no hurry because there's all the time in the world.

It's times like this, she says, that she misses her fireplace from the old apartment. But certainly not the balcony. Crossing the catwalk in the Hall of Thor's Might was bad enough, though it turned out to be an illusion in the end. Last year she'd had to jump out of an airplane in Siberia.

He remembers that. His first skydive. As far as he's concerned, his last. But the plane couldn't land, and they'd had to get into the facility to shut down the Russian Stargate. Jack had had to push him out of the back of the plane.

"I might move again," she says, looking around. "Buy a house. It would be closer to the ground -- and a shorter commute, if I picked the right area. Sammy says it would be a good investment. And I'd have off-street parking."

"Off-street parking. Enough reason to pack and move all this." He kisses the corner of her mouth. Tastes coffee.

Three glasses of wine at Sam's, more than enough brandy now; he doesn't have to think about the fact that the woman in his arms is ... him. Child of Claire and Melburne Jackson. Graduate of UCLA and points east. Fellow of the Oriental Institute. Member of SG-1.

"I'd hire someone," she says, offering his own words back to him teasingly.

He doesn't seem to be able to work up a proper sense of outrage at his own behavior. Or inclinations. And either it doesn't bother her either, or she's just looking for the most bizarre, self-destructive sex she can think of. Pick one.

But she's resting her head on his arm, smiling up at him through lowered lashes -- not because she's being seductive -- vamping him, he suspects, is just not in her repertoire -- but because she's half asleep. Not looking really bothered by anything. An improvement on things earlier this evening.

He reaches out and smoothes the hair back out of her eyes. It's really the world's most annoying length. Just eye-level. But his was about that length around 1981, and her sophomore year of college is obviously around the time Dani stopped paying any attention to either what people wore or did with their hair. As he recalls, that was when he figured out how to work the system and managed to get permission to start auditing some of the graduate level courses. He was also finishing up his Bachelor's -- why take four years on a bunch of makework courses covering things he already knew? -- and there just weren't enough hours in the day.

Seventeen years old. On his own for the first time. Hardly noticed.

He gathers that Dani's foster family -- families, as she had two -- wasn't a quite as pleasant an experience as his own, but he doesn't know the details. Nothing can actually be said to be pleasant, really, when you're orphaned as a child of eight and your only living relative tells you -- in essence -- that it's too much trouble to take you in. His foster parents were from his parents' professional circle, though. A couple around Nick's age, maybe even a little older. They'd never had children. They viewed him as something of a research project. His relationship with them was cordial but distant; pretty much all he could handle in the aftermath of his parents' death, and in the years that followed, he'd just gotten used to it as being the way things were. Useful enough in one sense; they'd died in a small-plane crash when he was nineteen and he hadn't felt very much at all. Regret, certainly. But not the wild, devastated grief he'd felt when his parents died.

He'd been raised in Chicago, Jack's home town. It's not impossible that their paths could have crossed at some point, though given the thirteen-year disparity in their ages, by the time Daniel Jackson had arrived in Chicago to live, Jack O'Neill was probably already off at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs.

Since he's never talked about his childhood, Jack has no idea how well he knows Chicago. And Dani's childhood was, apparently, for some reason, spent in New York.

He feels a heavy weight come to rest on his shoulder. She's fallen asleep.

So much, as Steven would have said, for 'getting lucky.'

Except that he feels lucky now.

This is pleasant. A lot more pleasant than thinking of her in a strange hotel room, and worrying about what she's doing there. He stretches his legs out under the coffee table. Leans his head against the back of the couch. He could wake her -- they could move -- if this were actually uncomfortable.

But he thinks he'll just sit here for a while.

#

The phone rings, shocking him to full consciousness. Phones. The one at his elbow rings in unearthly off-key harmony with one somewhere else in the apartment, and the ringer is turned up loud. He doesn't know what time it is, but it's still dark outside the windows and the candles on the coffee table are guttering. He realizes he's managed to fall asleep, the kind of asleep where you dream you're awake. He grabs the receiver.

"Daniel Jackson."

Silence. For a moment he's convinced it's a wrong number.

"Is Indy there?" Jack asks.

Oops. Just... oops.

She's sitting up. He hands her the phone. The conversation isn't that hard to interpret, listening to her side of it.

"I took him home with me."

"On the couch."

"You've seen it."

"Yes, at five in the morning."

"Fascinating. And was this what you called me to ask about?"

A longer silence. "When?"

Another silence. "An hour, maybe. How bad is the weather?"

She hangs up. "So much for the weekend," she says, getting to her feet. She smiles at him. "Thanks for keeping me here last night. That dress would have been a little hard to explain."

"Trouble?" he asks.

"When we dialed in to Kheb this morning to check the MALP we left, it wasn't there."

He shaves while she dresses. They're out the door in fifteen minutes. It's been snowing all night, and it takes them several minutes to clean off the Jeep. Both of them look like they've spent the night on the tiles. Not much sleep, and no coffee yet. They stop at a Starbuck's that's on her way -- she gets four Double Espressos and some muffins -- and she briefs him as they drive.

She drives like a maniac.

They left the MALP on Kheb that they sent last week. They programmed it to watch and record, and to send back its data in a high-speed pulse when they opened the Gate and triggered it. They do that on a lot of planets when they want to do long-term surveillance. That way they can record during a planet's daylight hours and collect the data during what passes at the SGC for downtime, usually the hours between midnight and six. For the last week or so they'd been collecting data on Kheb: atmospheric readings, background radiation, length of planetary rotation, generally reassuring and useful stuff.

At 0400 this morning they dialed Kheb.

No response from the MALP.

Since there was a MALP prepped and ready for a second mission, they sent it through just long enough to confirm that the first MALP was no longer there and then brought it back. At which point it became a problem large enough to start ruining people's weekends.

"Well, I can't see Oma being bothered by the MALP," he says. "Apophis -- well, Amaunet -- knew where Kheb was -- at least in my universe -- but they're dead both here and there. And I don't think a _Goa'uld_ would just move the MALP. They'd blow it up, and that would leave traces. And unless they're going to Kheb looking for the _harceisis_ , there's no reason for any _Goa'uld_ to risk going to Kheb at all."

"So nobody moved the MALP and it's still there," she says.

"Well, obviously it isn't."

"I bet it is," she says musingly.

#

"Sammy," she says. "The... pingy-thingy that we send through the Gate to trigger the MALP playback. What's the range on that?"

It's 0630. General Hammond, SG-1, and him -- the other Dr. Jackson -- are gathered around the Briefing Room table. Jack O'Neill is regarding him with undisguised suspicion.

"Maybe a hundred yards, tops. Strictly line-of-sight. The MALPs we monitor are right near the Stargates. It doesn't have to be very strong," Sam says.

"You have a theory, Dr. Jackson?" General Hammond asks.

"Yes, General. I think the MALP is still there. I think it's been moved. I think if we can increase the range on the triggering device for the playback we can get it to answer us."

"But Dani, that won't work no matter how strong the signal is -- unless the MALP's still in direct line with the Stargate."

"Or we can gear up and go look for it."

"You want to go _look_ for it," Jack says in disbelief.

"We were going to go next week anyway. It's on the schedule."

"That was before something ate our MALP."

"Kheb is a peaceful planet."

"So we've been told."

Jack regards him balefully. Daniel wonders if this is less about the fact that he's an unknown quantity -- and it's Jack's job to distrust unknown quantities -- than the fact that Dani's other phone is in her bedroom, and Jack can't be one hundred percent sure of which one he picked up at five o'clock in the morning, despite what she said. It would be nice -- for her sake -- if the man was jealous, even though it isn't doing Daniel's situation any good right now.

"General, I think I might have a solution. If we mount a triggering device on a UAV and do a low-altitude overflight, we should not only be able to get line-of-sight response over a much larger area, but we should actually be able to see the temple -- if it exists," Sam says.

"We _really_ need to check out Kheb, General," Dani says. "The stele in the temple on PR5-839 that SG-7 brought back pictures of -- the one with all the Ancient writing? -- also mentions the Ascended. There may be a connection between the Ancients and the Ascended. And Kheb is the only place we're going to learn more about the Ascended. We _absolutely_ need to go."

"'Absolutely'," Jack mutters.

"Do you know what it says?" General Hammond asks.

"We haven't finished the translation yet," she answers.

"Major? How long will it take you to mount the data collection device on one of our UAVs?" General Hammond asks.

"About three hours, sir."

General Hammond regards the men and women around the table. Looks at him.

"General Hammond, I know you don't ... _know_ ... me. But everything _I_ know -- about Kheb and about the Ascended -- indicates the Ascended are no threat to us. Certainly somebody else could have moved the MALP, and I'm not saying we shouldn't -- you shouldn't -- proceed with caution until you find out why it isn't where you left it. But if Oma Desala _is_ there, she's certainly no friend to any _Goa'uld_."

"Thank you, Dr. ... Jackson. I'll take that under advisement. Major Carter, you have a go to adapt one of the UAVs for an overflight to Kheb. Dismissed."

They get up to leave.

"Need an extra pair of hands, Sammy?" Dani asks, following Sam down the stairs.

"Oh, it's pretty straightforward. Besides, you look half asleep."

Dani yawns. "Didn't quite get as far as the bed last night."

Jack is behind him. He could swear he feels the man twitch.

Sam laughs. "You're a bad influence on yourself. Well, go get some sleep. Depending on what the UAV shows us, we might even get a chance to go through."

#

"Breakfast first," Jack says, snagging Dani's arm when they reach the corridor. He catches her off-balance; she staggers against him.

"I just want to--"

"And then you're going up to Fourteen and getting some rack time. Or it isn't gonna matter what Carter finds."

"Jack, that's not _fair!_ "

Jack has stepped around Daniel to pounce -- there's really no other word for it -- on Dani. That leaves Daniel walking beside Teal'c. He glances up. Teal'c is regarding the interplay with a certain proprietary satisfaction.

"It's 0700 on a Saturday morning. You're _supposed_ to be asleep."

She jerks her arm loose and glances back at the two of them.

_‹"I was sleeping. With Dan'yel,"›_ she mutters under her breath in Abydan. He can't hear her, but he can read her lips. Jack doesn't know the language, of course. Unfortunately, Teal'c does. It's really a _Goa'uld_ dialect. And Teal'c's hearing is extremely sharp.

#

Breakfast.

He tells Dani he'll go back to work on the stele from PR5-839 while they're waiting for the UAV data. It mollifies her somewhat. He wonders if Jack is planning to tuck her in and kiss her good night. She might be more willing to go get some sleep, if that was on offer.

Unworthy thoughts in the cold light of day, over steamtable scrambled eggs and coffee.

He finishes quickly and heads for his -- her -- their -- office. He's just getting everything set up, preparing to start work, when Teal'c walks in.

"I wondered if I could be of assistance to you, Daniel Jackson."

_No you didn't. You came to interrogate me. And if you don't like the answers, god help me._

What _are_ the answers?

He's never known what he wanted out of love and women. After Sarah, he'd actually given it a tiny bit of thought -- mostly because Sarah hadn't been what he'd wanted at all. It was Sha're. Sha're had been everything to him.

Well, Jack O'Neill is absolutely nothing like Sha're. So he guesses his real question is, how can Dani, his double, be in love with Jack O'Neill? His best friend. Who -- if he is not in love with her -- at least loves her. In a twitchy, non-regulation, overprotective way. This much is clear to a seasoned Jack-watcher.

Daniel wonders if he should have a little avuncular chat about this with Teal'c. Or even with Jack. Hey, yeah, that'd be fun.

But he's not all that sure what the point is. Where will it get them if they bring this out in the open? The SGC plays fast and loose with the spirit of the Air Force Fraternization Guidelines at the best of times, and the Air Force -- so he's told -- is the most 'civilian' of the military services -- but civilian or not, Dani's still under Jack's direct command. Jack can't invite her out for a drink one on one. He certainly can't date her. In fact, they should both have spoken up about these feelings -- of hers, of his, of theirs -- and gotten themselves reassigned far, far, apart.

Like that's ever going to happen. Because it's not just Jack and Dani. It's Jack and Dani and Sam -- _Sammy_ \-- and Teal'c. And the ways all four of them relate to each other. Teal'c said they were a family. And you can't just break something like that up.

Except, in the military, you can. Jack and Sam could be re-assigned to the opposite ends of the Earth tomorrow, away from the SGC. Teal'c, well, he's pretty sure General Hammond would give Teal'c the chance to go home, because Daniel isn't sure Teal'c would stay at the SGC without Jack. Though he thinks this Teal'c might stay for Dani.

So what can Jack say? What can _she_ say, for that matter? And what can either of them do if he -- or she -- says anything? Nothing except split up SG-1. And none of them wants that.

But the ghost at the feast here is that this isn't some mutually-agreed-upon _detente._ She thinks she isn't loved in the same way she loves. And she could, of course, be right. Friendship, even affection, is hardly the same thing as the passion that toppled the walls of Troy. Or that could send someone searching the galaxy for their lost wife for almost four years.

Sha're.

If she loves Jack the way he loved Sha're, Daniel pities them both. Because he can't imagine Jack ever loving anyone that much, and that means he'll never love Dani the way she...

Deserves.

Fine.

He'll just explain to Dani that even if Jack _does_ love her and is willing to say so, he's incapable of loving her as she deserves. And then he can go to Jack and tell him that his pet archaeologist is in love with him and he can stop being so emotionally unavailable -- a nice phrase Daniel picked up listening to Sam and Janet dissect the available talent on-Base. (Of course, _he's_ emotionally unavailable, too, but he's actually pretty comfortable with that.)

And then Dani and Jack will team up to murder him and hide the body, which will provide a nice bonding experience for them. Only -- being on SG-1 -- they're up to their necks in bonding experiences already. It isn't helping anything. Dani's miserable when she lets herself show it. And Jack? Well, Jack's just Jack. He's never really been able to figure the man out.

What it comes down to is that -- on his deathbed -- Daniel realized he'd never been happy. Lacked the capacity for it, somehow. Tried to make up for the absence of happiness in his life by doing good in the world. Failed at that, too. And -- coming here -- to find a counterpart of himself with exactly the same problems is a kind of intolerable that's right out of some Classical Greek hell.

Oh, the labels are different, but the _primum mobiles_ are the same. Both alone and lonely -- and won't admit it. A tiny circle of friends, all drawn from the workplace. Her only close friends are her teammates. It's been almost eight years since her last romantic relationship. That was Simon Gardner in Chicago. He gathers it ended even more spectacularly than his and Sarah's did. He got a research grant that took him to New York afterward. She went to teach at Berkeley.

The work at Stargate Command is challenging and fulfilling, but she's occupied and content, not happy. She's found Skaara, and freed him, and sent him home, so honor is satisfied, but Abydos is no longer her home. Sha're, of course, is dead. And because of that, and many other things stretching both forward and back through their shared history, she's convinced of the insufficiency of every action. Nothing is soon enough. Or large enough. Or fast enough. Or smart enough. Or good enough. Or just ... enough.

Jack probably isn't really helpful there. _Don't do that. Don't touch that. Shut up. Stop that. Do this my way._ In his own universe, it never mattered how many times Daniel was right -- or they entered a situation so, well, _alien_ that the only way to deal with it was from outside the box -- he'd always been starting right back at Square One with Jack. But inevitable or not, he can't stand watching the same thing play out here. Because they could all die tomorrow, and where does that leave her? Not in terms of the life the world will see or remember -- she's been gone from Academia for six years now -- no publications -- so she might as well be dead already, in those terms -- but in terms of what she will actually have been and done.

She's opened the Stargate. He knows she doesn't think so. He didn't.

She's helped save Earth from utter annihilation. Six times. (He only knows the exact number because Teal'c keeps count.) She dismisses this as something someone else would have done if she hadn't. And thinks she could have done more.

She's saved -- personally, and with SG-1 and other SG Teams -- countless other individuals and civilizations. She dismisses it all as coincidental, irrelevant, and less than she could have done. Which he knows perfectly well, having presented the same arguments himself when the sum of his life was being reckoned up. Odd that he should think they were reasonable refutations when he offered them, but not reasonable for her. Unfortunately, logic insists that there must be an absolute corollary. Either he's done all he could in his life to help others, or she hasn't.

It's quite clear to him, though, that she has, presenting him with an interesting view of himself. But not doing much to help Dani.

Unless, of course, she wants to become a candidate for Ascension.

And she doesn't.

When they discussed his ... death ... she tried to be tactful, but he knows the choice she would have made. She would have stayed with her friends, even though -- he could hear Jacob/Selmak plainly -- the odds were that he would survive severely impaired.

The times he's left the SGC, she hasn't. Of course, one of them was after Sha're died. But she didn't leave after they found Skaara, either. She stayed. With Jack.

Which is what this keeps coming back to.

Being happy and doing good. He thinks if he backs her into a corner for long enough, he can get Dani to admit she's succeeded at the second. If the first has to involve having Jack O'Neill, though, he's not sure what they're going to do. But he's damned -- in the literal sense of the word -- if he's going to contemplate a quantum continua of selves all mired in his own mistakes and problems and just do nothing if there's any way he can change it.

He runs a hand through his hair, turns around to face Teal'c. "Oh, that depends."

"Upon what does it depend, Daniel Jackson?"

"If you know how to make Dani happy."

Teal'c cocks his head, regarding him. "She is quite content."

"Now, see, I _know_ you know the difference between happiness and contentment. And before we have to have the rest of this conversation, I know you heard what she said out there in the hall. We went back to her place from Sam's last night. We sat up talking, very late. We fell asleep on the couch. Jack phoned. Here we are."

"And you wish more."

More from Dani? From life? "I want her to..." He wants her to stop cruising bars. But he doesn't know whether Teal'c knows about that, and he isn't going to be the one to tell him. "I want her to be happy."

"Were you happy in your own world, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c asks.

"No. No, I wasn't. I was..." he smiles bitterly. "Content."

"Then perhaps that is as much as Danielle Jackson, too, may hope for," Teal'c says.

"Why?" Daniel says bluntly.

"True happiness is rare," Teal'c says.

"I was happy with Sha're," Daniel says. If she'd lived... If he'd gotten her back...

"Then you believe that love brings happiness?" Teal'c asks.

"It can," Daniel says carefully. "If both people are in love. In the same way."

Teal'c raises an eyebrow, saying nothing. Daniel wonders if he's said too much. He's never been quite sure how much Teal'c knows about the things people don't talk about, and what he really makes of _Tau'ri_ social customs and all the so-called unwritten rules.

And here, of course, things could be completely different.

Landmines.

"I will leave you to your work. And wish you ... contentment," Teal'c says, bowing.

He's not really sure what to make of that either. He turns to the blackboard. And the translation. Much simpler than human emotions.

#

Jack walks her up to Fourteen.

She knows he thinks she's going to double back to her office. She would, too. Or she'd like to. She doesn't completely dare.

It would be nicer, she thinks, to be sleeping in Daniel's VIP quarters. Possibly even with Daniel. Though there is the matter of the security camera. On the other hand, there's a decent-sized bed, which is a real attraction.

The kissing was nice. More than nice. He kisses very well.

"This Daniel guy," Jack says.

She glances up, sure for one horrified moment that Jack has read her thoughts. But no, his mind is elsewhere.

"He's just ... me, Jack," she says. "A little different."

"A lot different," Jack says feelingly.

"He's just a guy. And I'm not. We've been the same places, done the same things. He's on SG-1. He knows you."

"Some other me," Jack says. As if that's some kind of proof of anything.

"Doesn't matter. Went to Kelowna--"

"Died."

"So would I have."

"Yeah, well, let's not think about that, because apparently you wouldn't have had some glowing lightbulb lady bring you back to life again."

"And dump me in another universe."

"Still trying to figure that one out."

"Well, we can't figure it out either."

"'We'."

"Daniel and I. Which is why, Jack, we should take him to Kheb, because he already has experience communicating with the Ascended, and--"

"Not going for it."

"Jack, if _I_ was missing, wouldn't you want me back?"

They're at the door to Temporary Quarters on Fourteen now. They stop.

"You know the answer to that, Indiana."

Jack would not only want her back, he'd do whatever it took to get her back. She knows that. Daniel's Jack isn't doing that, though. Daniel's Jack thinks he's dead. Saw him quite thoroughly die, Daniel says.

Nevertheless...

"So his people want him back, too. And we have to help him."

"And... has he talked about going back?"

"Not... exactly." He's talked about finding Oma Desala. Finding out why he's here. Finding the Great Path again. Not about going back to his SG-1.

"Which is why I'm not inclined to hand him the keys to the castle. Now go get some sleep."

He slides his keycard through the door. Opens it. Gestures her inside with a flourish.

She sighs, and walks inside. Jack doesn't trust Daniel because he doesn't act like her. It's true. He doesn't. But it just puzzles her, it doesn't raise her suspicions.

He's just ... different.

She lies on the bunk, looking up at the bottom of the bunk above it. Her boots are on the floor beside her, her glasses tucked carefully into her pocket. Jack, given the opportunity, would be asleep by now.

Jack.

She thinks of Daniel's world, the one in which, so he tells her, Jack and Sammy feel things for each other that they just don't talk about. Hard to imagine. Jack would never look at Sammy that way. Too much like Sara. Just for starters. And Daniel says that what Jack-there feels for Sammy-there, Jack-here feels for her. Whatever it is.

Impossible to imagine.

Daniel asked her what she wanted. In terms of a life with Jack, was the not-exactly-implied subtext. She only wishes she knew. With Simon, with Skaara -- one she loved, or thought she loved, and never should have; the other she loved -- literally -- as a brother -- her choices and their shared futures were obvious and easy to imagine.

Not so for a life with Jack.

Not that there will ever _be_ a life with Jack. Because she happens to think that Daniel's wrong. And even if he isn't, what then? Jack will always put duty before personal feelings. She's seen that over and over in the last five years. If he wants her -- and doesn't want to want her -- their nonexistent relationship is over before it's begun.

They'll remain friends, of course. Colleagues. Until he dies, or she dies, on some offworld mission. Or he retires and leaves. Or is transferred far away. She will undoubtedly remain at the SGC until death, age, or government cutbacks carry her off.

So much for her life. Not much of one, when all is said and done. She doubts Daniel's was much better. _Is_ much better, because though he died, Daniel isn't dead. Daniel has a second chance. Maybe he can make his life better.

If they can get him to Kheb.

#

Colonel O'Neill is sitting in his office. If asked, he'll feign ignorance as to its very existence. Base legend holds that it's a converted broom closet.

Neither factoid is true. It's a perfectly standard cubicle on 17, just below Cataloguing and Translation. He spends a lot of time there, not only because an SG Team generates a lot of paperwork -- and though O'Neill hates paperwork, and dodges as much of it as he can, after more than twenty years in the Air Force, he's gotten resigned to at least some of it -- but because nobody will bother him in his office. He's there now. Thinking.

About Daniel Jackson. There's something about this guy that really bothers him, and what bothers him more is that he just can't put his finger on it. Frasier says he's Indy's quantum double. The science checks out. He knows all the right things -- dates, places, people, weird alien gobbledegook.

But he's nothing like Indy.

Carter likes him just fine. Apparently she and the Carter where he comes from are pretty nearly identical, and the two of them were close friends there. She thinks of him as an interesting new toy, but that's Carter all over. Just as long as she doesn't try to take him apart to see how he works, they should be okay.

Teal'c says Jackson's just fine with that meditation thing. But doesn't have a clue about fighting with staff weapons. Looked a little spooked when he watched T and Indy work out, too -- though that's not exactly how Teal'c put it. Well, O'Neill doesn't really like to watch her getting kicked around like a rag doll himself, but her double shouldn't really have any problems with that, should he?

Why aren't they identical? Or are they, and her double is lying? There's an interesting thought. And it brings him right around to the last member of his team. Who has never had any taste, judgment, or luck in men. And who has, from the moment she saw him, accepted Daniel Jackson unquestioningly for exactly who and what he said he was.

Would have, O'Neill thinks, no matter what the science said.

Took him home with her. Wants to take him through the Stargate. Wants _them_ to go through the Stargate to a planet that's looking more and more like a bad idea by the minute. When a MALP disappears, O'Neill has found over the years, it's almost always a good idea to pick up your marbles and go home. The only reason not to -- he could certainly have gotten the mission scrubbed this morning if he'd really wanted to -- is that going to Kheb might be a way to get rid of Daniel Jackson. Because the other thing Teal'c told him about that night was that he and Jackson had a nice chat about Indy. And apparently Jackson's worried that all of them didn't _respect_ her properly.

Sometimes it's difficult to figure out what the hell Teal'c is getting at. Just what is O'Neill supposed to make of something like: _'Daniel Jackson feared that we did not appropriately value the contributions Danielle Jackson makes to SG-1 and do not treat her person with the appropriate respect'_?

It irritates him more each time he thinks about it. Because he values every member of his team. They've earned his respect -- in the field and under fire. And if Indiana didn't like the way he was treating her, he'd hear about it. He always does.

What right does this guy have to waltz in and _meddle?_

He's never seen Indy quite this happy.

She deserves to be happy. No one more. And normally he'd be glad to see her move on. Which is kind of funny as normally there has to be something there for you to move on _from._

She thinks he doesn't know.

She's wrong.

She thinks he doesn't care.

She's very wrong.

He's not supposed to care. It would be a disaster for the team. The team is the most important thing. Because no one else could keep her safe out there. Safe and alive. Makepeace nearly killed her. He won't risk a repeat of that.

But he's kissed her. Told her that he loves her.

She doesn't remember. It was while they were time-looping, caught out by the mad archaeologist and his Ancient time machine. An endless series of repeats of the same ten-hour stretch of time. How long? He's not sure. Something more than three months, anyway. Six? Maybe that. So ... 180 ten-hour stretches of time that everybody but he and Teal'c repeated over and over with no memory of the previous loop. Time enough for him and Teal'c to learn enough Latin to help Indy translate the Ancient inscription.

Time enough for him to decide to kiss her.

They were in her office.

He remembers the combination of irritation and indignation with which she'd greeted his increasing fluency in Ancient. It wasn't as if he actually knew the language, of course. More a matter of just memorizing everything needed to translate one inscription -- and then memorizing the translation itself as they finally got it. Not nothing, but not quite in the class of reading a whole alien language at a glance. Still, it looked that way to her, because at the beginning of each loop she was starting the translation with no memory of the previous 'day.'. And he'd been working on it for hundreds of hours with her.

And then, after god knew how many time loops, she'd happened to remark that he could do anything at all with no comebacks. Because the loop would simply reset itself at the end. And he and Teal'c would be the only ones who would remember what had happened.

He'd thought about that for several weeks of loops. Weeks that he spent riding his motorcycle through the hills, technically AWOL. Golfing -- not AWOL this time, as he and Teal'c did it in the Gateroom. Taking up pottery, something he'd always wanted to try, and the materials were stored on-Base, since the Archaeology Department needed them.

And he thought about Indy. Thought all the illicit thoughts that her Commanding Officer must never think about one of his subordinates, but which were somehow permissible when said CO was going stark staring mad and the entire universe was only ten hours long.

By then he'd gotten convincing the others of the reality of the time loop down to a quick thirty-minute spiel that he was actually capable of reciting in his sleep. After that, he and Indy went off to her office to work on the translation of the inscription.

This time, he'd kept looking at his watch. She'd asked if she was boring him. Knowing that -- in a sane reality -- usually nothing bored him as thoroughly as translation -- but that today she'd barely gotten the glyphs up on the board before he'd started reciting the first several lines of the translation. (Accurately, too. He didn't like to think of how long they'd all been working on this.)

He'd said he wasn't bored. He was just keeping track of the time. (He didn't want to start what he had planned too late in the loop. And too early could have its own problems. Because he'd remember afterward even if she wouldn't.)

But then the time was right. And he got up from his chair and walked up to the blackboard. Turned her around. And kissed her.

He remembers that she swore. That she dropped the chalk she was holding. And kissed him back as if she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to kiss her. He told her--

And then the loop reset. They were sitting in the Commissary. And she was waiting -- once more -- for the answer to a question he never remembered hearing.

That was the loop that they finally cracked enough of the inscription to go back to the planet and shut down the machine. And his holiday in Hell was over. So he didn't get a chance to kiss her again. And she doesn't remember.

So since what they don't have can't go anywhere, he ought to be happy she's taking an interest in something that's at least a little closer to a possible relationship. Except why does it have to be with ... herself?

That's just weird.

Even when Harlan gave them all their own robot doubles and she got to spend a few hours talking to herself, it was different. They argued a lot, as he remembers.

She and Jackson don't argue. They just sort of finish each other's sentences.

And it comes to him, suddenly, why it is that Jackson and Indy are so little alike. If you took Indy and turned her inside-out -- reversed her, everything about her except the whole geek thing -- you'd probably come up with someone that bore a pretty close resemblance to Daniel Jackson.

Opposites attract.

You can't spend as many years in Black Ops as O'Neill has without being familiar with the concept of the honey trap: the enemy operative designed to be irresistible to someone on your side. To suborn them and turn them.

It's a pretty far-fetched notion in this case.

He can't shake it.

#

Daniel gets a little further with the translation in the next few hours. It seems to be more of a description than a warning, but unfortunately he doesn't have all the details. Either the rest of the inscription has been destroyed by the passage of time, or SG-7 didn't bring back images of all of the relevant pieces of rock. Either is possible.

What he does have -- and can translate -- is frustratingly vague. There are -- or can be -- or have been -- dark -- and he's not at all sure how to properly translate that word -- Ascended. And they should be fought, or avoided, or rebuked, or held up as a moral lesson for the instruction of the young. In any event, you should stay away from Dark Ascended.

The implications are disturbing. He'd been absolutely certain that the Ascended were universally, absolutely good. He knows that Oma is good. How could any entity gain that much knowledge, that much wisdom, and be anything less?

But apparently it's possible.

Is that why -- how -- he's here?

#

"So what is it that you want, Dr. Jackson? You don't mind if I call you Dr. Jackson?"

The chalk snaps in his fingers. _Ah, here's Jack._

He had Teal'c earlier and if Sam weren't working on the UAV she'd probably have been here by now on some pretext wanting to know what he got up to with Dani last night. It's nice to know they all care about her so much, but frankly he finds it just a little claustrophobic. She's a 31-year-old woman with four doctorates and -- as far as he can tell -- pretty lethal combat skills. It looks to him as if she can probably take care of herself. At least if not asked to go clothes shopping.

He takes a deep breath, turns away from the blackboard.

"You could call me Daniel," he offers.

"I don't think so."

Jack -- he supposes, given the tenor of the conversation so far, he'd better think of the man as Colonel O'Neill -- is standing in the doorway of his -- Dani's -- office. Regarding him with one of Jack's more murderous expressions -- which, frankly, Daniel doesn't feel he's done anything to deserve -- and asking him the one question he has tried and failed all his life to answer.

Especially now.

"'Want'?" he echoes.

"It's a simple question."

Oh, it's supposed to be. But it never is.

"Well, I'd like to know why I didn't just Ascend; how I ended up here; _why_ I ended up here; if it's possible for me to continue to the Great Path--"

Jack -- Colonel O'Neill -- is waving a hand in irritated frustration.

"No. What do you _want?"_

"I just told you--" He hears his voice harden in anger. O'Neill isn't listening. But then, Jack never did a lot of listening back where he came from, either.

"A lot of nothing," O'Neill says harshly.

Daniel supposes -- from the Colonel's point of view -- it is. Dani would understand. He realizes, with an actual sense of physical longing, that what he wants at this exact moment -- 11:30 on Saturday morning -- is to be at her apartment in bed with her. Asleep. Reading the morning paper. Discussing what to do with the day. Making love. Any of the above. He knows the neighborhood. There's an excellent cafe/bakery nearby. They could go out for lunch.

"All right. I want to go to Kheb. I want to go to the temple there and find out why I didn't Ascend. Is that simple enough for you?"

"So basically you just want to _die._ Have I got that right?"

"Look, Colonel, what is your problem? I didn't ask to come here. I'm sorry if you think I'm making trouble between you and your pet archaeologist--"

Jack always said he had a death-wish. Jack was right.

"She's not a pet."

"Oh? Then maybe you'd like to let me -- and _her_ \-- know exactly what she is. Because--"

"Hi, guys."

Dani walks into her office, stepping around O'Neill to do so. From the looks she gives both of them, she knows exactly what's been going on. Male territorial posturing at its finest.

"Sammy's got the UAV prepped," she says, walking over to the blackboard. She peers at it. "Launch in half an hour," she says, her voice already far away as she stares at the lines of writing and translation.

"This isn't over," Colonel O'Neill says to him. "Indy, you coming down to the Gate Room for the launch?"

She waves a hand vaguely, her back to both of them.

The Colonel turns sharply and leaves.

As soon as he's gone, she whirls away from the blackboard. Grabs his jacket in both hands. Slams him back against the table, managing the maneuver because he's shocked and off-balance.

"Don't!" she says fiercely. "Don't you ever! Don't tell him! Don't!" Her expression is a combination of fury and utter panic.

"I won't. I didn't. I promise."

She's shaking and wild-eyed, her breathing ragged with the effort her previous control has taken; the feigned indifference; the amiable vagueness. It's an act he's honed to perfection himself: the Idiot Academic, too thoroughly lost in Cloud Cuckooland to pay any attention to what's going on in the real world. It's served him well over the years.

"I won't tell him anything," Daniel repeats. Though surely he must know? Daniel hasn't read their mission reports, but from what she's told him, their missions have run close if not identical to the ones he remembers. Surely, in all that time, at the edge of death -- where they've been so many times -- she's let the truth slip? Or is that the trouble? That she has, and knows she has, and thinks Jack O'Neill doesn't care?

For a man who doesn't care, O'Neill was doing a pretty good imitation of a jealous lunatic just now. Or maybe it was just Jack's usual unsubstantiated paranoia and Daniel is misreading the whole situation?

He'd just like to be sure.

"Dani, he came down here and asked me what I wanted. He wasn't really very ... happy ... and I don't know why. And I didn't really have an answer."

She relaxes finally, and leans against his chest. "Not to go home?" she asks.

He reaches up, puts his hands on her shoulders. "I don't know. I died. Oma offered me Ascension. I was comfortable with that. It was a chance to do more good in the universe than I could do at the SGC. It seemed like the logical next step. I think I should take it, if I can."

"You should do what you _want_ to do, Daniel," she says chidingly.

And so he does. Kissing her is what he wants to do right now.

And she kisses him back.

"Gate Room," she says, after a long moment.

#

As they leave her office she gives the blackboard a last wistful look. Who knows when she'll have the time to really study it? If she's lucky, they'll have a 'go' for a recon of Kheb this afternoon. Which could mean Daniel will be gone in a day or two.

She steels herself against pain to come. It's nothing new. Everything she loves is taken from her somehow. She's known him less than two weeks, and has always known he was never hers to keep. It's -- probably -- why she told him as much as she did.

But she certainly doesn't want him to tell anyone else.

Jack would laugh, to think of her mooning over him.

Or -- worse -- pity her. She'd rather die than receive either reaction, because frankly she isn't sure there's any place far away enough in the galaxy for her to go to get away from them. Certainly not to escape herself.

And she knows that whatever else they were arguing about down in her office, at the end they were arguing about her. She couldn't hear all of it, but she heard the phrase 'pet archaeologist' loud and clear. And Jack saying she wasn't a pet. She's not sure what Daniel said after that. Something.

"You just confuse him," she explains to Daniel, as they walk toward the Gate Room.

"Yeah, he looked confused," Daniel answers, in a tone that indicates Jack looked anything but.

"You aren't acting like me," she explains, knowing Daniel will understand. Because she never has to spell anything out for Daniel.

Never for anyone before in her life. And when he's gone, never for anyone again.

"I think, you know," he says slowly, "that our whole lives have been different. The incidents are the same -- most of them -- but how they shaped us isn't. So--"

"--you want to Ascend. And I'd rather die," she finishes. "But we're still--"

"--variations on a theme, so to speak. We already know there's another me who doesn't join the Stargate Program at all."

"The one who's living in Egypt when Apophis conquers the Earth. So that's two of us who don't join the SGC -- or SGA, it would be in those theres."

They reach the elevators to take them to 28. She smiles up at him. "I'll just remind Jack that you're within the acceptable range of quantum variation, taking into account sexually-driven cultural bias and dimorphism within your age cohort, and watch his head spin."

"And then you'll tell him that I don't act like you because I'm a guy."

"Right."

They reach the Command Center. Jack gives her an unreadable look at the sight of Daniel, but she doesn't care. Nobody's better qualified to interpret the visuals they're going to get back from Kheb.

Down on the Gate Room floor, the UAV is set up on its launch ramp just outside the Danger Zone. The five of them, General Hammond, and the other Gate Room technicians watch as Walter dials Kheb.

The wormhole engages. Stabilizes.

The UAV is launched.

Sammy sits down at the console, controlling its flight. Following Daniel's map, she's sending it due west, in the direction he's indicated for the temple. Every five seconds, it will attempt to ping the MALP on the ground below.

The UAV camera shows them a panorama of treetops, a shining ribbon of river. It's been almost a minute now. The readout shows the UAV is more than ten kilometers from the Gate.

"And ... bingo!" Sammy says.

"What was that?" Jack asks, as the bottom of the screen begins to scroll with what looks like gibberish to Dani.

"We've got a hit, Colonel. The UAV found the MALP. It's uploading data now. I'm circling to stay within the immediate area."

"Wait-wait-wait! What was that? There! Can you hold on that image and zoom in?" Daniel demands excitedly.

Sammy's fingers fly over the keyboard. She opens a small window within the realtime image. Scrolls the databuffer backward. Freezes on what she knows Daniel is interested in. Zooms in. Pixels flurry and shuffle across the screen as the image enhances. It is an aerial view of a building. (You might as well call it a temple as anything else.)

"That's it! That's the temple!" Daniel says.

A moment later the MALP imagery arrives and is displayed on one of the other screens. It shows a frontal view of the same structure. It has a Stargate-shaped archway leading to a courtyard within. They can't see much beyond the wall and the courtyard, though, because the MALP is outside.

"I was right," Dani says smugly.

Sammy turns the UAV around and heads it back to the Gate. The remote-redial program works fine. The Gate activates, and a few minutes later it skids across the Gate Room floor -- a clean, salvageable landing.

"Colonel? Dr. Jackson?" General Hammond says.

"Well, sir, we found the MALP," Jack says neutrally. "Not sure how it got there -- or why."

She glances at Daniel, indicating that of the two Dr. Jacksons present, he's the one that should speak.

"Well, it looks exactly like my Kheb. The temple is identical. I believe that means the Ascended and their acolytes will be present here as well."

"So we go through, find somebody to talk to, and find out what's going on," she says.

Find out why Daniel is here.

She regards Jack challengingly. He isn't wild about the idea and they both know it. "And bring back the MALP," she adds. MALPs are expensive.

Jack looks at General Hammond.

"SG-1, you have a go," the General says.

"And General, with your permission, I'd like to take Daniel Jackson with us as well," Jack says.

She isn't expecting that. She freezes in place, keeping herself with an effort from looking at either Jack or Daniel.

"Colonel?" General Hammond says.

"Well, if we do run into any of these Ascended things, he's met them before. It'll save us a trip. And it looks like a long walk."

"Very well, Colonel. Agreed."

#

It seems odd to be waiting at the foot of the ramp to go through the Gate with -- but not as a part of -- SG-1. They're bringing a FRED with them to retrieve the MALP, since a MALP's top speed is well under two miles an hour and it isn't really suited for rough terrain. Dani takes her quarterstaff as part of her equipment. That's something else he didn't expect.

The Gate engages. The five of them walk up the ramp and pass through.

"Dr. Jackson?"

There's no confusion about who Colonel Jack O'Neill means.

"Well, so far it looks just the same."

They fan out along the white stone path. It's afternoon on Kheb. According to the information gathered by the MALP, the period of planetary rotation is about 30 hours. They should have plenty of time to at least reach the temple in daylight. He's not sure how long they're going to be there. It all depends on what happens.

And he may not be leaving at all.

He's not sure how he feels about that. He really ought to feel one way or the other. But he realizes that he's most interested, actually, in knowing _why_ he's here. And he hasn't really thought very much past that.

"So we get to this temple? What then?" Jack -- it's too hard to think of him as Colonel O'Neill, so he stops -- wants to know.

It's a long walk, and they may as well amuse themselves. There's nobody here but them, and there's no chance they won't find the temple. Sam has a gadget that allows her to track the MALP, and they're following that. Assuming the MALP is still by the temple -- and they have no reason to think it isn't -- the signal will lead them right to it.

"Well on my Kheb there was a monk at the temple. I'm hoping he'll be willing to answer some questions. Maybe tell me why I'm here."

"Just some basic meaning of life stuff?" Dani suggests. A joke.

"Something like that. The inscriptions on the interior temple walls are basically a primer for Ascension. We should be able to get film of that, if nothing else."

"So you can read them and ... Ascend?" she asks dubiously.

Actually, he doesn't know. He knows the monk at the temple did when _he_ died, because he saw it. He also assumes that he Ascended when he died, but to be honest, he doesn't remember actually ... dying. And he's very much alive now. He's not sure he can just will himself to take up where he left off.

"Maybe," he says.

"Well that's useful," Jack says. But he doesn't sound quite as hostile as he could. And Daniel has years of experience with Jack in every possible mood, stretching from Abydos (the first time) to this morning.

"It's all about enlightenment," he says. "Reaching a higher plane of existence."

For a moment, Dani and Jack give him identical looks of pained disbelief.

"Well if it's all so high and enlightened," Jack finally says, "what are you doing back here?"

Daniel sighs. "I wish I knew."

#

After a few hours of walking they reach the temple.

The MALP is waiting just outside the outer courtyard gate. Sam opens a side panel and runs a diagnostic.

"It's in perfect working order, Colonel," she says. "The battery isn't even depleted. In fact--"

"You can take it apart when we get home, Carter. Right now, why don't you and Teal'c load it up on the sled? Dr. Jackson, I assume we just walk up to the front door and knock?"

"I think that's about right."

Dani walks into the courtyard -- just as Daniel would, in his own universe. She's looking around curiously. But there's an emotional distance to her reactions to this place. She has no personal reason to come here. _He_ came to Kheb driven by the need to find Sha're's child. To fulfill her dying wish. To protect the baby from Apophis. He remembers that, at the back of his mind as he arrived, were thoughts of the life he would lead afterward. Raising the baby on Earth, where it would be safe from the _Goa'uld_. Safe and loved.

All a fantasy. He was incapable of giving the _harceisis_ child the protection it needed -- not only from the world, but from itself. And so he had left Sha're's son with Oma Desala. He only saw Shifu once more.

He wonders, sometimes, why Shifu came back at all. It's true that they -- the SGC -- were hunting for him, determined to wrest his _Goa'uld_ secrets from him. But a child protected by Oma Desala could certainly have hidden himself until the end of time. Did Shifu return simply to confront Daniel with the darkness -- real, potential -- in his own soul? Or to turn him from it -- from the SGC itself, in the end -- and set him on the road to the Great Path once more?

The Path he doesn't seem to be able to stay on, come to that.

He's never been certain.

Jack follows Dani into the courtyard. He follows Jack. She reaches the foot of the steps to the temple. The door opens. A young man steps out.

"Same monk," Daniel confirms quietly.

"Hello," Dani says. "I'm Dani Jackson, this is Daniel, and this is Colonel Jack O'Neill. We're peaceful explorers, and we were hoping that we could come inside and talk to you for a while."

"All knowledge comes at a price," the monk says. "You have come here with two men whom you love, and who love you. You must now choose one."

It takes a moment for the monk's words to penetrate. Daniel is taken off-guard by them, but not nearly as much as Dani is.

_"Choose_ one?" She takes a staggering step backward, right into Jack, and recoils from him as if he's suddenly become... radioactive. He puts out a hand to steady her and she jerks away as if he's hit her. The perfect portrait of a woman in love.

"Why do I have to _choose_ one?"

The monk said she was in love with _both_ of them. And both of them were in love with her. Daniel supposes it's possible. He hasn't paid any real attention to his feelings for a very long time. Hasn't wanted to. All they bring him is pain.

"You must choose one of your men in order to proceed," the monk repeats. "Only then will you gain that which you desire."

"I don't desire anything that much," Daniel hears her mutter under her breath. "What happens to the one I choose? And what happens to the other one?" she asks aloud, struggling to keep her voice neutral. Asking the same questions he'd ask in her place.

"That is not your concern," the monk says.

"Oh isn't it?" she demands, and suddenly he's seeing a side of her that's nothing to do with him or anyone he can imagine being. A side of her that has much more in common with Jack. Jack when he's completely lost his temper and is looking for something to shoot. "I think it's _definitely_ my concern. I didn't ask to come here and choose anything. We came here because Daniel said you were nice people and he wanted to come visit you because he's looking for a friend of his named Oma Desala. And I am not choosing _anything_ just because you tell me I have to!"

She takes a step toward the monk, and suddenly Daniel's afraid that she intends to try to enter the temple by force. And he knows what happened when the Jaffa in his own world tried that. He steps forward.

"Look, if I could just... We've come from very far away to visit your temple and seek wisdom here," he says hastily. "We know that the Ascended are wise and good. In another reality, I've visited this place, and met with one named Oma Desala. When I died, she set my feet on the Great Path. But something went wrong. So we came here, hoping to find out what it was. We're willing to abide by your rules, but we ... _need_ ... to understand them first."

"I am not _choosing_ somebody," Dani says again. Still sounding, as a matter of fact, remarkably like Jack.

"Well, maybe we could each pick somebody," Sam says. She and Teal'c have followed them into the courtyard now.

"That will not be possible," the monk says, regarding her. "No one is in love with you, nor are you in love with anyone."

Daniel sees Dani twitch at the repetition of the forbidden word. He'd actually feel sorrier for her if not for the fact that he's so worried. Because this is nothing like the way things went in his reality.

"I am, in fact, quite fond of Major Carter," Teal'c says blandly.

"Why, thank you, Teal'c. I like you, too," Sam responds.

"Um, folks? I know nobody but me has ever been here before, but you've got to believe me. Nothing like this ever happened the last time I was here. The monk invited me right inside."

"And were you in love with anybody at the time, Dr. Jackson?" Jack asks sarcastically.

"Only my wife. She'd ... recently died. I was here searching for the _harceisis_ child she'd been forced to bear while she was a host."

"Offspring of two _Goa'uld_ hosts," Dani footnotes. She isn't willing to look at either of them at the moment.

Jack winces. "Sorry," he says.

Daniel shrugs. "Well, this is pretty weird, actually. They -- he -- ought to want us to come in, be willing to confuse the hell out of us with a bunch of really obscure sayings about candlelight and rivers and things, and then -- I don't know."

"Of course," Dani says, taking a deep breath and turning around to face them, "you're assuming that Oma's temple is located in the same place here as it is there. Maybe this place belongs to some other Ascended. Some really cranky Ascended. Because while it looks Asian, the whole business about choosing between paramours--" she manages to get the word out, though it nearly chokes her "--has a lot more to do with the Grail Romances."

"As in Monty Python?" Jack suggests.

"As in Chretien de Troyes and 12th century Europe. So it's not really my field. It's an offshoot of the whole King Arthur legend, a whole cycle of tales focusing on knights going after the Grail and having some pretty bizarre adventures."

"And that has what to do with our current situation?" Jack asks. Patiently, all things considered.

"It's similar. The Grail is guarded by supernatural beings. It symbolizes enlightenment. If that isn't the knowledge of Ascension guarded by the Ascended, I don't know what is. To get to it -- to achieve the Grail -- you have to prove your worthiness, i.e., your purity, by passing all the tests that the Guardians of the Grail set for you -- answering questions, slaying dragons, that sort of thing. The trouble is, I could care less about this particular Grail. So why are they asking _me_ questions?"

Jack shrugs. "What happens when the guy gets the Grail?"

"He goes to Heaven, heals the Fisher King, makes the crops grow, whatever the writer of that particular story sees as the big payoff. Jack, it isn't my field. Sure, there's a mystical cup in just about every culture. But the Grail from the Grail Romances is unique because the poems are pretty much high class medieval pornography."

"This is what you did in college?"

"I did a lot of things in college, Jack."

"I just bet."

Every time Daniel thinks he's got this place and its people figured out, they surprise him. Back home, Jack would never have listened patiently to this long an explanation from him -- especially one that wandered so far from the actual point. But the real point here is buying time to think. And creating distance from what the monk has said. Because what that is, really, is the disastrous unmentionable secret that must never be uttered. Because if they _do_ have to face it, Daniel realizes, it means the end of SG-1. And here, as in his own world, SG-1 is Earth's first line of defense against what lies through the Stargate.

"There are evil Ascended," he blurts out.

_"What?"_ Dani says, finally turning to look at him.

"You're telling us this _now?_ " Jack says.

"According to the stele from PR5-839 -- which I haven't finished translating yet. But it talks about Dark Ascended. Or _a_ Dark Ascended. And it's a warning, so I'm pretty sure that 'dark', in this context, can be translated as 'evil'." And the longer Daniel stands here, the less this place -- or at least its caretaker -- seems like the temple he remembers visiting on the Kheb in his world. Maybe Dani's right.

Or maybe this is some kind of ... test.

"Look, if you choose--" he begins.

"Not doing that," she snaps.

"Maybe you're choosing a candidate for Ascension," he says.

"And maybe I'm choosing who lives -- or dies," she counters. "Jack?"

He shakes his head. "Not gonna risk it. Let's get back to the Stargate."

She turns back to the monk. "You could have--" she begins.

But the monk is gone.

Before either of them can stop her, Dani runs up the temple steps. The door opens when she yanks on it. She runs inside.

"Stay here!" Jack orders the rest of them, already following.

Daniel is right behind him.

"Is this how you follow orders back where you come from?" Jack demands as soon as they're both inside.

"Yeah, pretty much," Daniel answers.

Jack gives him a disgusted look.

Daniel looks around. The inside of the temple is just as he remembers it. But it's deserted. No monk.

And no Dani.

"Indiana! _Indy!"_ Jack shouts.

Nothing.

#

She's screwed up.

Jack is going to kill her. Assuming, of course, that she gets out of this alive to _be_ killed. Daniel described -- and sketched -- the interior of the temple for her. This isn't it.

This isn't, in fact, anything at all.

Utter blackness. A sense of vast space. There's a floor beneath her feet. She can feel it. She strikes it with her quarterstaff, hears the echo. She swings the staff carefully around herself at full extension. She should still be close enough to the door that the staff touches it, but it doesn't. She retraces her steps, tries again. Still nothing.

She's really in trouble.

"Hello?" she says. "Look, I'm sorry if we've offended you somehow. We just want to talk to you; I just need to find out more about this choice you want me to make. Daniel -- Daniel Jackson? -- was supposed to Ascend. In fact, we believe he _did_ Ascend. But he ended up in an alternate universe -- _my_ universe; here -- instead of continuing on the Great Path. And we were hoping you could fix things for him."

She's lying and she knows it. She doesn't want things to be fixed for Daniel. She wants him to stay. But she also knows _he_ wants things to be fixed. He wants to know why things went so bizarrely awry.

The monk said...

She'd much rather not think about that. Because even if it's all true, it doesn't -- it can't -- make any difference. And besides, there are many kinds of love.

She knows how she loves Jack. And if he loves her the way he loves _The Simpsons_ or chocolate cake or his Friday night poker games or even the U.S. Air Force, it doesn't do her a lot of good, now, does it?

She doesn't know what 'good' would be.

She remembers falling in love with Simon Gardner. She'd just turned 24. Postdoctoral work at the Oriental Institute. She'd had a grant, tracing language evolution among the ancient cultures of the Near East. Specifically, looking for proof the Egyptian language had (had to have) a linguistic precursor. Nobody'd ever found it before. She didn't believe it existed (because the language had been brought to earth by aliens, something she would never admit aloud) and was determined to prove herself wrong.

People always call her an Egyptologist, but she isn't. Her primary fields are archaeology and linguistics. She'd added anthropology to make the dead bones talk and ancient history just to get an overview -- plus by the time she had the other three she could pick up a new PhD in her sleep and what else, really, did she have to do with her time? But linguistics is about how languages evolved, and why. It is a subject she finds endlessly fascinating.

But at 24 most people were still working on their Master's. Simon, her research assistant and several years older than she was, had expected her to be, well, _older._ And not as pretty, he'd said. She'd done her best to ignore him at first. She'd really had no idea what to make of him. English. Red-gold hair and hazel eyes.

She was no stranger to sex, though she'd never had time for a serious relationship. But she'd fallen in love with Simon and he with her. Maybe they were both really and equally in love at first, for just a little while. And she'd allowed herself to imagine a future with him. Both archaeologists, after all. There were a lot of married couples in archaeology. Some famous. But she and Simon crashed and burned -- spectacularly -- and about a year later she met Jack O'Neill.

Married at the time.

Whom she has, in fact, known for six years now.

And it is not possible to imagine a relationship -- romantic, domestic -- with Jack. Whom she sees almost daily, sleeps with chastely on occasion, and nearly lives with in the course of her duties. Whom she loves, but cannot imagine possessing.

"This isn't supposed to be about me," she mutters. But this is Kheb in her universe, so maybe it is. Only she has no interest in Ascending. Finding out about it, yes. That would be interesting. Doing it, no.

"Hey?" she says. "Hello? Is someone there?"

Anyone?

#

"I remember this," Daniel says, looking at the walls. They've searched the entire temple by now. It's empty. But the walls are covered with writing. An explanation of the mechanics -- the philosophy -- of Ascension.

"Great," Jack says tightly. "You remember it. Where does that get us?"

"Well," Daniel says, "I can do this."

He turns away. And walks through the wall. On the other side is the room in which he found Shifu. Dani is lying on a raised platform, unconscious. The monk stands over her. He looks up as Daniel enters, and smiles.

"Why are you doing this?" Daniel asks.

"She must choose," the monk answers.

"Yeah, I get that. Look, she doesn't want to choose anything. The only reason any of them came here is because of me. Why don't you let _me_ choose?"

"You have already chosen," the monk tells him.

Chosen Ascension. Chosen the Great Path. Not the same choice Dani is being asked to make. Is it?

"Well she's not going to choose Ascension. She doesn't want to Ascend. She wants to stay with SG-1. What she doesn't want to do is make the choice you're asking her to make without knowing what the consequences are."

"No one truly knows what the consequences of their choices may be," the monk says.

Now this sounds familiar. Daniel sighs. "I think we're going to leave now," he says. He reaches out to gather her up.

But his hands pass right through her.

#

_"Jack!"_

Okay, she's decided to panic now. Because either she's dead, gone blind, been transported to another dimension, or something even more awful. And it's her own damned fault. She didn't have to chase the monk into his temple. She could have left it alone.

She never does leave well enough alone.

Her flashlight doesn't work. She's tried a box search -- as far as she can; the absolute lightlessness is disorienting -- and can't find walls or the door. Without her staff, she knows she'd have fallen by now. The dark is confusing her senses, making her dizzy.

There isn't even an echo.

Is she going to have to stay here until she chooses Daniel or Jack? What will happen then?

Ra wanted her to choose.

"All right," she says, sitting down. "I'm going to stay here forever. You'd better get used to having me around. Daniel says there are evil Ascended. The last time anybody asked me to choose it involved killing innocent people. Either convince me to trust you, or we don't have anything more to say to each other."

Suddenly the monk is standing there. She can see him clearly, though she can see nothing else. She scrambles to her feet again.

"You must first convince yourself," the monk says.

"I don't want--" she begins.

And she's standing in front of the Stargate. They all are. Along with their MALP on its FRED.

"Carter, get us out of here," Jack says.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Jack demands as soon as they step through.

She shakes her head. Now that they're back in the SGC, she isn't really sure. He turns to glare at Daniel. "And as for you--"

"Colonel O'Neill?" General Hammond, looking concerned. "Was there a problem?"

"Start to finish, General," Jack says. "Apparently Dr. Jackson's intelligence on Kheb wasn't exactly ... accurate."

"I don't think that's quite true," Daniel begins. Jack just glares him to silence.

"We're back now," Dani says. She hears her voice shake. Sammy puts a comforting hand on her arm.

#

The debriefing is complicated.

It's also awkward, although they manage to gloss over for General Hammond exactly _why_ the monk insisted she choose between Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill. And General Hammond, wise man that he is, does not insist on clarification of that point. It's enough that the monk insisted that she pick one without telling her what would happen to the one that she didn't pick.

She does not go into the details of the Grail Legend.

"And then the monk, um, disappeared while none of us was looking. And I followed him into the temple."

Jack is not actually going to call her an idiot in front of General Hammond, but his expression is eloquent.

"By the time I'd followed Dani into the temple, she was gone. I'd told the others to hold their positions, but Daniel Jackson followed me inside. We searched the temple and didn't find anyone. And then he walked through a wall."

"I'd done that before," Daniel says. "The last time I visited the temple. Either I was helped to pass through by the monk, or the wall itself may be an illusion. Either way, there's a room behind that wall. I saw Dani -- Dr. Jackson -- there, with the monk. She was unconscious. He told me again that she had to choose. I tried to explain that she had no interest in Ascension, but when I tried to move her, I couldn't touch her. Then we were all back at the Stargate."

"I wasn't unconscious," she says. "I wasn't in the temple, either. I was in a ... void. Everything was black. I couldn't see anything. As far as I could tell, there wasn't anyone there, but I assumed there was someone listening. So I tried explaining that I wasn't going to be making any choices until he convinced me I could trust him not to harm any of the others. And the monk showed up and said I first had to convince myself. And then we were all back at the Stargate."

Sammy and Teal'c's stories corroborate theirs, except that for them, all that happened is that they waited in the courtyard for approximately half an hour before they were suddenly whisked to the Stargate.

Jack's, Daniel's, Sammy's, and Teal'c's times all seem to match up fairly closely. Dani has no idea of how long she was alone in the dark.

#

"And none of you have any idea of why the inhabitants of the temple seem to have been so interested in -- our -- Dr. Jackson?" General Hammond asks. "Or why they chose to return you to the Stargate?"

Or why they brought the MALP there in the first place, if they didn't want to talk to them?

"They said she had to choose because I'd already chosen," Daniel says. "But the Ascended as I know them would never _force_ someone to make a choice. And certainly not to choose Ascension." Though he's reasonably sure Dani wasn't being forced to choose Ascension. What he isn't sure of is what the purpose of the choice she was being asked to make _was._ Other than to make them all leave with no interest in going back. If that was its purpose, it's certainly worked perfectly.

"Colonel? Do I need to lock Kheb out of our computers?" General Hammond asks.

Jack hesitates. "No," he says finally. "But I don't think we need to be in a hurry to go back there, General."

"Very well," General Hammond says. "Dismissed."

Jack rounds on Dani the moment the General has left the Briefing Room.

"Indiana," he says, motioning for her to follow him.

Sam puts a hand on Daniel's arm as he automatically goes to follow them.

"I, ah, don't think they want company right now, Daniel," she says.

Probably not, considering that from the look on Jack's face Dani is in for a world-class chewing out. He sighs.

"Sorry. Habit."

She smiles. So much like the Sam he knows, and so different. "I'm sorry Kheb wasn't what you hoped it would be."

"Yeah. Me too." He'd hoped Kheb would provide him with answers, and instead, all he has is more questions. The monk there seemed to know him. Does that mean that the Ascended can see across dimensions? That must be true, or else how could he have ended up here in the first place?

And the monk said he'd made his choice. Can that possibly mean he's chosen to be alive again here? He can't believe that. Why would he do that? He'd chosen the Great Path.

Well, he isn't on it now.

Why not? That's the real question, isn't it?

Sam pats his arm. "Don't worry, Daniel. We'll think of something."

He follows her out.

#

"Are you looking for a desk job?" Jack demands as soon as they reach his office.

She's grateful to receive her dressing-down in private, but then, he wouldn't air SG-1's private quarrels in a public corridor. Bad for morale. And they're enough of a subject of gossip as it is. But she's shaking all over. The darkness inside the temple terrified her on some atavistic level that she doesn't quite understand. And she's still off-balance from having had her emotional dirty laundry dragged out into the light of day -- and in front of everyone on the team -- by an alien monk. Even if Jack is -- apparently -- prepared to completely ignore that part of the mission.

"What did you think you were doing? I ordered us back to the Stargate. _Not_ to follow an unknown hostile into unknown territory."

It's the beginning of a lecture she's gotten too many times over the years for her liking. Her recklessness. Her carelessness. For that matter, her disregard for the chain of command -- which means that Jack gives the orders and she is, for some mysterious reason known only to God and the U.S. Air Force, supposed to believe that in situations unlike anything anyone in the human race has ever encountered before, he has a better idea of what to do than the team's designated cultural specialist does.

"Yes. I'm sorry. Is that all?" Her voice is clipped and brusque, because she's going to start crying in another minute. She can tell. The shock is wearing off now, and Jack snarling at her is just the last straw. She's already turning to go.

"No, it's not all," Jack says, grabbing her arm.

And she turns back and slaps him.

Oh, god, she _slaps_ him. She's wanted to slap Jack O'Neill for _six years._

But it will get her fired. Imprisoned. Shot. She stares at him in open-mouthed horror. He looks surprised. She's sure she's going to die now. Struck by lightning if her heart doesn't simply stop. This isn't supposed to happen. It's wrong.

But he just holds out his arms and she steps into them and he holds her. She's shaking. Like a child. Like a girl.

"Bad?" he asks, after a few moments.

"It was dark," she says. Thirty-six languages, professional translator and interpreter of alien cultures, and she knows she can't possibly convey the quality of utter blackness. Or the fear that it might not ever have had an end. "I was stupid," she adds.

"Well don't do it again," he says after a moment. "You'd be damned hard to replace."

She nods. Steps away.

"Now go home," Jack says. "Get some rest."

"I will," she promises.

#

_'You have come here with two men whom you love, and who love you.'_

Another minute and he would have kissed her. No time loop this time to save his ass. Of course, she did also just hit him. Slap him, anyway. She's thrown better punches. He's never seen her look so stunned. Scared. Unhappy. He'd really like to get his hands on that monk.

He'd like to find a way to blame Daniel Jackson for all of this, too, but in fairness, he can't. Jackson might have wanted to go to Kheb, but O'Neill's positive he didn't go there planning to hang any of them out to dry.

Especially Indy.

If anything the monk said back at the temple was true -- and he knows at least some of it was -- the guy's got feelings for her. And O'Neill knows that she likes him. But it's a real mess. Because Kheb was supposed to be this guy's ticket out of here, and now, apparently, it isn't. So now what do they do with him? The real question -- he doesn't want to deal with it, and knows he has to -- is can he watch Indy cuddle up to Daniel Jackson and maintain the detachment that he has to maintain? Because if he can't, he has to do something about it.

Now.

#

She goes and changes for home before going down to her office. It's already after seven, and the day started far too early. She wants out of here. There's a Thai take-out place that's almost on her way home. She can call from the car.

Daniel -- as she'd expected -- is sitting there. Staring at the blackboard with a cup of coffee in his hand.

"Daniel?" she says. "Saddle up. Going home."

#

He glances up and sees her standing in the doorway. Plaid flannel, khakis, and hiking boots. That outsized stadium jacket. He has a little more sympathy for the way she dresses now. It's a defense mechanism.

And he ought to tell her he's going to stay in his on-Base quarters, but he really can't bear the thought of these concrete walls a mile underground one more minute. So he smiles and nods and she goes back to his quarters with him. Tells him he might as well start moving his stuff out, so he fills a couple of the bags she left him that first night with clothes and other odds and ends after he's changed.

And they go.

He calls in the order to the Thai restaurant as they drive. No need to consult her to find out what her favorite dishes are. Thai beer to go with the meal.

It's nine o'clock by the time they get back to the apartment.

He wonders what Jack said to her.

"What would I have chosen?" she asks, halfway through the meal, as if they're continuing a conversation. In a sense, they are: two interior monologues coming together. _What would the consequences have been?_

"I don't know. My choice -- the choice I had to make -- was between Ascending or dying. Not between two ... people. That makes so little sense that ... it's as if they wanted to offer you a choice that they knew you wouldn't accept. One that would drive you away."

"They could have just told us to leave."

"Yeah, I saw how well that worked out for you."

She takes another pull on her beer. "So... normal good-type Ascended?"

He's told her everything he knows about the stele.

"I think so."

"Don't want to talk to us?"

"Guess not."

"Aren't going to help you?"

"Doesn't look like it. At least not yet. Maybe later."

"Later?" She frowns, thinking about what that might mean. "Daniel, this Ascension business. Suppose I _did_ want to Ascend. What would I have to do?"

"Well, you would have to want to ... release the burden of your earthly existence. Understand yourself, I suppose. And--"

"Die," she says flatly.

"More or less."

"So to go back to what you were doing before you showed up in my office, you have to die."

When she puts it that way, it sounds kind of unpleasant. "I wouldn't really be dead."

But he was, in every way that mattered. Is, to all of his friends. There, in his own world, their grief is still fresh; he's been dead for less than two weeks. But they're going on with their lives, tidying away the detritus of the life he has left behind. Making new lives that don't include him. It's an odd thought, to be in a position to know that absolutely. Because he _did_ \-- must have -- Ascended.

He remembers making that choice. Choosing to follow Oma. And then being in Dani's office. Apparently -- by clock and calendar -- immediately thereafter.

How? _Why?_

"But you don't know anybody who's managed to Ascend without dying -- or pretty close -- first."

"Dani, I've seen exactly one Ascension, and at the time I didn't know what I was seeing." And yes, the monk did have to die first.

"I'm sorry," she says. She drains the bottle in her hand and reaches for another beer. "Maybe they'd talk to you if we weren't there."

He smiles at her. "I don't think the SGC will be dialing up Kheb again any time soon."

"No," she agrees. "But we probably need to take another look at PR5-839 to see if there's anything there in the temple ruins that SG-7 missed. You're the logical one to go; we're the only two people at the SCG who can read Ancient. You could get to Kheb from there."

It's true. He could. But the thought breeds an odd reluctance in him -- he'd be going offworld on her recommendation. If he disappeared, if he made an illicit detour through the Stargate...

And he's not entirely sure any more that his answers are on Kheb.

"I'll think about it."

"You think too much."

She's drunk three beers to his one. It occurs to him with a peculiar sense of clarity that his alter-ego is not only female, but -- if you stretch a few points just a little -- sexually promiscuous, hard-drinking, and apparently something of a brawler.

Not what he ever wanted to be. Not traits he's ever admired in others.

Traits you'd really expect Jack to have, actually. He doesn't, though. Daniel's never seen Jack get into a fight except in the line of duty -- and even then he's actually fairly reluctant to -- has never seen him drunk -- and (except when drugged by offworld aphrodisiacs) he's almost quaintly chivalrous, to the point of being a _parfait gentil knyght._ He's an amateur astronomer, likes to fish, has a standing date for poker with the boys on Friday nights, and -- weather and mission schedules permitting -- likes to spend weekends tooling around back roads -- alone -- on his old motorcycle.

"I probably do," he agrees. They both think too much. But it is, after all, their job. They're supposed to think -- long and hard -- about what they encounter on the other side of the Stargate.

And advise Jack.

She's yawning by the time they've finished eating. Long day. Long walk. And a lot of stress.

"Going to bed," she says, getting up and starting to clear away. "Feel free to entertain yourself."

"See you in the morning," he tells her.

She's in and out of the bathroom quickly, and the line of light under her bedroom door goes dark a few minutes later. He changes to sweatpants and a t-shirt and wanders around the apartment for a few minutes, checking out the bookshelves. Nearly everything is the same as it is at 'home' -- but there are a few surprises. Books from college courses he never took. More of an interest in Celtic myth. A few lurid paperbacks on UFOs -- that's a real surprise. He picks one up -- _The Truth About The Men In Black_ \-- and takes it with him to the office _-cum-_ guest bedroom.

Sam always had an endless appetite for these things. But then, Sam always wanted to see every new Science Fiction movie that came out, and then was indignant about the bad science. No matter how many times it happened, her surprised annoyance never varied. Jack actually encouraged her, digging up new movies for her to watch. Daniel thinks he just enjoyed her reactions. Of course, Jack could get just as pissed off when they screwed up the guns. And they always did.

He'll miss that.

He realizes, thinking that, that no matter what happens, his plans don't include going back. That somehow, without having consciously thought about it, the choice he made that day was a final one. He has to figure out a way to go on. But to do that, he has to figure out why he's here.

Is there something he needs to learn here? To do? Is this a final test? Or just some sort of ... accident?

He barely gets through the introduction of the book before he falls asleep.

#

He's jarred awake by a high wailing sound, and for a moment, half-awake, he thinks the smoke alarm is going off. But then he realizes that it's a human voice. Dani.

He runs through the living room. Jerks open the door to her bedroom.

In the light coming in from the street he can see her. She's sitting up in bed, sound asleep, making a weird high-pitched keening noise.

He sits down on the bed beside her and turns on the bedside lamp. Touches her -- cautiously -- to wake her up -- she's obviously having a nightmare, a bad one -- but though her eyes open and she clutches at him, she doesn't wake.

_‹"You can't have him! You can't have him!" ›_ she insists desperately, over and over. The language is _Goa'uld_.

The question isn't who is she trying to protect -- that's obvious -- but which _Goa'uld_ is she trying to protect Jack _from?_ He wonders why he wonders. A number of them have tried to kill them all, over the years.

"Dani -- wake up -- Dani--" It does no good.

The anguish in her voice is heartbreaking. In her dream, she knows her pleas are useless. Finally he risks shaking her. She gasps and comes awake at last. She stares at him as if she's never seen him before.

"Hey," he says.

"I woke you up," she says foggily, eyes focusing on him slowly.

#

Daniel is sitting on her bed beside her. Black t-shirt, grey sweat-pants. It's sometime in the night. Her bedside light is on. The nightmare -- one she has often -- hasn't quite let go yet. Her body and mind are still unsettled.

Daniel is here, rumpled with interrupted sleep, but she sees Jack. She knows the sight of Jack's body, naked in a tumbled bed. It is something she tries to forget.

Will never forget.

When Hathor took over the SGC she hadn't really understood what was going on. She knew Hathor had a peculiar influence over all the men, but she didn't know how strong it was, or how far it extended.

Not then.

Two airmen had come to her office and told her Hathor had asked to see her. General Hammond had already asked her to act as liaison with Hathor and told her the _Goa'uld_ Queen was to be given full access to the SGC. She'd already given Hathor a full tour of the facility and had gone to do further research on the Hathor of myth. She thought nothing of the summons.

But Jack was in Hathor's quarters when she arrived. He was standing in Hathor's arms. He was dazed. He didn't react to her arrival.

The _Goa'uld_ Queen kissed him. Caressed him.

Began removing his clothes.

She saw the two of them coil and twine in Hathor's bed. Heard every sound. Compelled by Hathor's threats, she dared not look away. Hathor wouldn't harm her. Hathor would hurt Jack.

She saw everything.

Jack doesn't remember. He was drugged by Hathor, just as all the men were. When Hathor escaped through the Stargate, her biological spell was broken, and everything the men of the SGC did while under the compulsion of Hathor's peculiar form of _nish'ta_ vanished from their minds. Jack knows Hathor tortured her. He even remembers -- vaguely -- that Hathor used him in concubinage and turned him -- temporarily -- into a Jaffa.

He does not know that she saw him. She never told anyone.

But she remembers. The memories are all twisted up inside of her with anger, pain, and fear. Hatred.

And longing.

The physical scars have long since healed. The emotional ones never will. How can they, when she has to pretend that they don't exist at all? Bad days tear them open.

And she has nightmares.

"It sounded like you were having a pretty bad dream," Daniel says.

"Just revisiting old friends."

_I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams._ Hathor must have come to Daniel's SGC as well, she suddenly realizes. But Hathor would have been able to bespell him. The subject has a sudden horrible fascination for her, and she wants to know how things went in his universe. But her counterpart is insightful and clever. If she asks, he'll know more than she wants him to. More than she wants anyone to know. Ever.

_Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here..._ She glances at the clock. Just after four. On a workday she'd just get up and go on in to The Mountain now, but it's Sunday.

"You should go back to bed," she says.

"I think I'm pretty much awake now. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"You'd have to go out and buy the tea first." She sighs and leans forward, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Now she's both tired and wired, and she's afraid that if she tries to sleep again, she'll simply dream about Hathor once more.

Perhaps about Hathor and Daniel.

#

He puts a hand on her back and begins to rub it through the t-shirt she's wearing. In a way, it's a more intimate act than all the kissing they'd done before. Because it implies that he has a right to touch her this way. Familiarly. To give comfort.

She sighs under his touch and shifts to lean into him.

And suddenly he knows -- in the way that you know that the weather has changed and the rain will come -- what's about to happen. And he feels an odd sense of necessity, as if this is not only something that they may or might want to do, he and she, but something that is, in some as-yet-unknown sense, required of them.

Choices.

Better here, he supposes with a faint ironic flash of humor, than in the courtyard on Kheb.

She straightens up, inside the circle of his arm. Turning toward him.

It is so easy.

#

She closes her eyes, and when she does, it is not Daniel's skin beneath her hands, it is Jack's.

And she is Hathor.

It is this way every time, with every man, no matter what she does to try to erase it. Every intimate touch takes her back to that room, to that moment. She feels the imprint of darkness, of failure. Of loss.

But this time is different.

It's always about defiling innocence, somehow, and there's nothing here -- nothing left -- to destroy. The shadow of the _Goa'uld_ Queen inside her mind retreats, leaving her alone in her bed.

With Daniel.

It is an unexpected gift, and she reaches for it greedily.

Reaching for him.

#

Afterward, on the edge of sleep, he thinks about Ke'ra. He met her a few months after Sha're died. She looked a lot like Sarah. He was immediately attracted.

Ke'ra was Linea. Destroyer of Worlds. That, he thinks now, was the real attraction. Because somehow, on some level, he _knew._

And it was after Hathor. After Hathor had taken him and _ruined_ him in some way he still doesn't really understand. And even though Jack had killed Hathor by then, it didn't help. He'd felt, somewhere beyond thought, beyond words, that the Destroyer of Worlds was a suitable mate for what Hathor had made of him.

Part of him -- a part he could not bear to examine for years afterward -- was _glad_ Sha're had died. So that she wouldn't have to come back to a husband who had lain in the arms of a _Goa'uld_ Queen.

He remembers.

What happened has the murky surrealness of nightmare, but he remembers. Her voice. Her body. Her perfume. Her laughter. And none of it mattered here -- now -- with Dani.

Because she bears the same scars.

"What did she do to you?" he asks. There's no need to name the third person in their bed.

"She made me watch," Dani answers.

#

She can talk to Daniel about Hathor. It wouldn't be possible except for the fact that what Hathor did to him was just as horrible.

Different. She cannot imagine it. Having her will destroyed that way. Being _touched_ that way.

Equally monstrous. And worse, perhaps, because everyone knows every detail of what happened to him. The two of them are bound together by pain and secrets. And she understands, without either of them needing to say it, that because of Hathor he's locked himself into a life of chastity to rival that of any medieval monk, while she's gone searching for damaging sexual adventures. Barely restrained by common sense.

Until now.

She said she didn't love him, and she lied. She does love him. She's taken a man into her bed whom she loves, and they've both survived. A man whom she'll continue to see when the morning comes. Even do this with again. For the first time, she feels that it might be possible to win against Hathor.

Even -- someday -- forget her.

#

He's thought, from the moment he came here, that her team protected her too much. Now he thinks they haven't protected her enough. How could they not have realized what had happened to her?

How could she have managed to hide it?

Not her injuries. But the rest. Because he knows, from having been Hathor's victim himself, that there was more involved than just having to watch Hathor take Jack to bed. Certainly bad enough, but Hathor is -- was -- a _Goa'uld_ Queen. The worst of what the _Goa'uld_ can produce. Even Ra hated and feared her. And he knows Hathor despised Sam. So she probably hated Dani, too.

"You should tell him what she did," he says. Knowing she won't.

"I can't," she whispers. He feels her tears against his skin.

"No one else would have to know." That's what she's afraid of. Official reports. An official record. They've both spent as much time skirting the truth with the SGC as telling it.

She shakes her head again. Too loyal. Too loving. As much as he was, when he nearly followed Sha're down into death, so certain that Amaunet wouldn't kill him. Certain Sha're could stop her.

It's just the same.

At least she's told someone, if only him.

#

On Monday, they're both back at the SGC.

And Jack drops a bizarre bombshell at the Monday morning briefing.

It's a general overview of the week to come -- nothing in-depth. An hour spent covering not only their upcoming assignments, but -- because Jack is 2IC and she and Sammy are Department Heads -- the missions of the other teams, so she knows what briefings she has to prepare and Sammy knows what's new and exciting in her department. Teal'c pretty much sits in by courtesy for most of it.

The table in front of her is piled high with folders. From the look of things, she's due for a busy week. Nine outgoing missions, though only one for them, now that Kheb is off the roster.

"General," Jack says, "I'd like to make a suggestion."

"Go ahead, Colonel."

"Since it looks like we'll be enjoying Dr. Jackson's company for a while -- the other Dr. Jackson -- I'd like to request permission to attach him to SG-1 for a month or so. That will give Indy some time to catch up on some other projects, and we can evaluate him in the field before assigning him to another Gate team on a permanent basis."

She stares at Jack, unable to believe what she's hearing. He's dumping her? He's dumping her for _Daniel?_ Without telling her? Without _asking_ her?

"That sounds like a fine idea, Colonel. Permission granted."

Jack is deliberately not looking at her.

Two can play this game. "In that case, General, I'd like permission to go back to PR5-839 and take another look at the ruins there. I'm not sure that SG-7 got the full text of the inscription Daniel and I have been working on, and I think it may be important."

"Very well, Dr. Jackson. Take a couple of Marines with you."

"Yes, General."

#

"Congratulations. You've just been assigned to SG-1."

She drops the files on her desk, unable to keep the bewilderment -- and bitterness -- out of her voice.

"What?"

Daniel looks up from his desk. They have the complete translation of the stele now, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. They know what it says, but not what it means.

"You're on SG-1. Jack asked for you in this morning's meeting. General Hammond okayed it. I'm off, you're on."

Daniel gets slowly to his feet, looking stunned. "Why-- Why would he do that?"

"'For evaluation.' Because you're staying. So he said." It's not his real reason. Or not the whole reason. But she doesn't know what that is.

"Is this...?"

"For a month. Or so. He said."

"He's going to kill me," Daniel says simply.

"I'm sure he'll adore you."

Had Jack been that mad at Dani for what she'd done on Kheb? Is that what this is about? He doesn't, somehow, think so. More about what the monk said. Rotating him in to SG-1 is as good a way as any to make a -- temporary -- breathing space.

But it isn't a solution.

#

She goes back to Kheb.

Illicitly.

The logistics are easy enough. She has a go for PR5-839. She takes two Marines. Checks out the ruins and sets up their base camp carefully, out of line of sight both of the Stargate and the temple. Tells Hanks and Rinaldi that she's going to be several hours. She'll call them if she needs them.

The ruins are a warren, and that's good.

There's nothing more to find than what SG-7 brought back. Disappointing. She take a lot of film so she'll have an alibi.

Then takes off for the Stargate at a dead run.

Dials Kheb.

She might be found out, but it's always easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Jack taught her that. And if she can get back to the ruins before they notice she's missing, she can always say she wandered off. She's legendary for that.

Once she's on the other side, she heads for the temple doing walk-trot-run. God help her if she twists an ankle. Nobody knows where she is. But it's a long way, and she has to make it there and back before her escort back on 893 starts searching for her. Because if they really get suspicious about her absence, they'll phone home for a bigger search party and find out she isn't actually there.

She reaches the temple unscathed.

The monk is waiting.

"Hello," she says. She's panting a little, but she walked the last half mile, so she's breathing fairly evenly. "Can we talk now?"

"You must choose," the monk says.

"I think you know that I've chosen," she says. Maybe he'll let her get away with that. What _is_ the choice? Who she really loves? Who she loves most? Who she's more like?

Who she's slept with?

Which of the two she would save, if she could only save one?

God help her, she knows the answer to that.

"But Daniel needs your help. He chose to Ascend. Why isn't he ... Ascended?"

"The most subtle trap is baited with desire," the monk answers.

"So he's trapped?"

"When the mind is free, the body will follow."

"Oh, not terribly useful here."

"All things may be of use, when properly understood."

"Look, I really don't have _time_ for this. I just need to know -- _he_ just needs to know -- why he's here."

"He is here for the same reason all things are here, Danielle. To learn."

Daniel warned her about this. It's still frustrating, though. "But what does he need to learn?"

"No one can know another's path."

"I don't _want_ to know anybody else's path! I don't even want to know _mine!_ All I want is for Daniel to have what he wants!"

She's starting to lose her temper, and she knows that would be a bad idea. But it will be almost three hours back to the Gate if she starts now, and she's pretty sure she's going to get found out. They were only scheduled for five hours on PR5-839 and she's already spent four of them.

She can't afford to care about that now. This is about Daniel, not her.

The monk, of course, has infinite patience.

"You do not know yourself, yet you are certain that you know another."

"I know Daniel," she says stubbornly.

"How can this be?"

Because he's her mirror. Her opposite. Her twin. The self she might have been. Could have been. "Because he's far enough away to see," she answers steadily.

And the monk smiles.

"All will be well, Danielle Jackson. You must go now. This place is not for you. Not yet."

_Not ever,_ she vows silently.

"What about Daniel?"

"Give him my words, and let him seek wisdom."

The monk bows. Reflexively, she bows in return. She turns to go.

And she's standing at the Stargate.

She doesn't stop to question her good fortune. She dials. Steps through. She barely makes it back to the edge of the ruins before she runs into Hanks.

"Hey, Doc."

"Hanks."

"We were looking for you."

"Told you I'd be a while."

She checks her watch surreptitiously. It's been four hours almost exactly since their arrival.

"You weren't in the temple." His voice is faintly accusing.

"Yeah, well, I was hoping there might be some more inscriptions somewhere else. What, Rinaldi already win all your petty cash?"

Hanks grins and relaxes. "Found her," he says into his radio.

"Copy that," Rinaldi responds.

"I just want to take one more look around and then we can go home. That okay with you?"

"Sure, Doc."

Rinaldi catches up to them as she makes a last pass through the ruins, camcorder out. She films some more things for appearances sake, but there's really nothing here to find.

#

That night -- in their now-shared bed -- she tells Daniel what she did. He isn't pleased.

"Is that what you were doing today? I should-- You could have been--" Words seem to fail him at that point. He simply stares at her. Indignant. Outraged.

"I had to know."

"Know _what?_ "

"I don't know. But I got away with it, I'm pretty sure, and I got further than I did the last time. The monk gave me a message for you."

She repeats the conversation she had with the monk, every bizarre non-sequiter -- or zen _koan_ \-- and all. She has a very good memory.

#

New questions. The first one is, why hasn't Jack strangled her by now? Because if this is a sample of the kind of stunt she habitually pulls, the man would have every right. The second...

A trap?

Is this a trap? This place? This world?

Has he been _trapped_ here? Diverted from the Great Path somehow? And sent here?

Because he could ... like it here. More than like. Even be happy. But not if it's a trap.

Keeping him from where he's supposed to be.

Doing what he's supposed to do.

#

Daniel Jackson is working out.

He's been here a month today.

Six missions with SG-1.

Living off-Base, in Indy's apartment.

O'Neill prefers not to think about the details. But it's just as well. With Jackson on SG-1 and Indy having this ... fling ... they're getting back the distance from each other that they have to have. Safer, too, than what she usually does when she goes off the rails. For which he's quietly grateful, though he'll barely admit it even to himself.

Paperwork's come through. Jackson exists. And can go rent his own damned apartment.

O'Neill has nothing to complain about in Jackson's fieldwork. He'll be a fine addition to some other Gate team. O'Neill wants Indy back, though.

Wants her right where he can keep an eye on her, with no more clandestine little side trips, like the one she made when she was supposed to be on PR5-839. He figured that one out after reading Hanks' and Rinaldi's reports. What he can't figure out is where she went. She was only out of their sight for a little over four hours. Not long enough to get to the temple on Kheb and back, even if she ran both ways. He knows she went somewhere she wasn't supposed to, though. She was too careful to set up their base camp somewhere out of sight both of her and the Stargate. And then went off somewhere alone, with nothing more to protect her than a big stick and her Glock. With nobody knowing when she'd left or where she was going.

Enough to get her confined to Base permanently if General Hammond found out.

He plans to call her on it the next time she's got a few beers in her. She'll probably confess.

He wonders where it was. The only thing obsessing her right now is Kheb, and they aren't going back there any time soon.

#

He's been having ... dreams.

They have the same hyper-real clarity that the one Shifu gave him did, but they're still only dreams. _A_ dream, really. The same one, over and over. Just a moment, a few seconds of time.

Running toward the Stargate. Under fire. Sam is ahead. Jack and Teal'c, he knows -- the way you know things in dreams -- are behind. They've been ambushed. Jaffa staff-blasts strike the ground all around them, throwing up a hail of dirt and stones. One hits a buried rock just right. It explodes like a claymore. With the omniscience of dreams he sees the fragments drive with lethal force into Jack's chest. Jack staggers, stumbles. Goes down.

Dying.

He doesn't tell Dani about the dreams.

#

Since she's temporarily off SG-1 she catches a few missions with other teams that need her specialty -- all cakewalks -- and spends a lot of time in her office.

Working.

It's a luxury to have that much uninterrupted time to simply _work._

She worries about SG-1 every moment that they're gone. But it's only a minor counterpoint to her thoughts, because she knows that Daniel will take care of them.

She knows Daniel.

Better each day. Though there was never a day, not even the first day, when she didn't know him. They fit together. It's as if, knowing him, she can at last solve the puzzle of ... herself.

There are pots and pans in her kitchen now. Just a few.

And, knowing Daniel, she knows there is something ... not wrong ... but something odd and complicated that is filling his thoughts. Something he isn't ready to talk about just yet.

She knows they _will_ talk about it, though.

When it's time.

#

The mission goes wrong from the start. The locals know English, but don't want to speak it. Jackson figures out the local dialect, and gets along fine in that, but there are undercurrents O'Neill doesn't like. The place is rich in _naquaadah,_ though, so SG-1 is doing its best to open up a trade relationship. The local headman assures them that the _Goa'uld_ have left a long time ago. A really long time ago.

Apparently the local headman is really lousy at telling time.

Because just as they're all sitting down to a feast of welcome, the village starts swarming with Jaffa. Teal'c recognizes them as belonging to Taweret. Jackson identifies her as the Egyptian hippopotamus goddess, protector of women in childbirth and destroyer of demons. Which would be really damned interesting if they weren't all fighting for their lives and running like hell.

They're several kliks from the Gate, being pursued by the Jaffa from the village, and it's a dead solid cert that the fat lady and her Jaffa will be at the Gate when they get there.

And she is.

They're two kliks away -- no cover for the last stretch -- and they can see her clearly. Overdressed, annoying, and with about a dozen Jaffa with her.

But every once in a while SG-1 is entitled to a little break. They're a half-hour overdue for their check in. When General Hammond activates the Gate to find out why they've missed it, O'Neill is able to tell him the situation. The establishing wormhole makes the Jaffa on the platform scatter, too, which is entertaining, though not strategically useful. All they do is take up covering positions near the Gate.

General Hammond scrambles two teams of Marines to bring them home. They come through and take up positions in front of the Gate, redialing to secure an outgoing wormhole. With the Marines to provide covering fire, SG-1 makes a run for it, expending the last of their munitions on the Jaffa behind them. C-4. Grenades. Every last clip in his and Carter's P90s. And, of course, there's Teal'c's staff weapon. All Jackson has is his Glock, but he isn't shy about using it.

Jaffa ahead. Jaffa behind. The Marines have mortars and a heavy machine-gun.

Jackson holds up well under fire.

The machine-gun is tearing up the ground around them. Mortar rounds are lofting over their heads, exploding behind them, discouraging pursuit.

Business as usual.

The ground around them is criss-crossed by the flashes of staff-weapons spraying up dirt and small rocks in near-misses. The enemy Jaffa aren't giving up. Not when the penalty for failure is death.

Bodies everywhere. Just a few more yards now. The wounded Marines have been ordered back through the wormhole. Teal'c is behind him. Carter and Jackson are just ahead, zig-zagging to avoid staff-blasts. There's too much noise for any orders to be heard, but his team knows what to do. He already knows that Jackson is a seasoned pro. He has no worries on that score.

He sees Jackson stumble and start to go down.

He catches up to him, yanks him to his feet, and drags him on, up the steps of the Stargate. Teal'c reaches them and takes Jackson's other side. By now Jackson's gone limp, not helping at all, and that isn't good.

They step through. Last ones.

"Lock it up!" he shouts as they step through.

They lower Jackson to the ground. The Gateroom is filled with Marines, medical teams, stretchers.

The front of Jackson's uniform is covered in blood. Too much. O'Neill can see it well up, pooling on the fabric.

Jackson's gasping for air, and every time he does, blood spatters his face.

Chest wound. Bad. What happened? Staff-wounds don't bleed.

"I need a medical team here!"

But it's Indy who runs up the ramp and reaches him first. She kneels beside Jackson, takes his hand.

"Going now?" she asks. Tears are running down her face, but her voice is steady.

His eyes focus on her. He tries to nod, but he can't. Can't speak.

The medics reach him them, but as they prepare to lift him onto a stretcher, his body starts to ... glow.

They recoil. The Gateroom Response Team racks their weapons.

"It's all right! It's all right!" Indy shouts. "Hold your fire!" She sits back on her heels, raises her hands. There's nothing but light where Jackson's body was, now.

The glowing form rises up. Jackson's empty blood-soaked clothes crumple to the ramp. The glowing form reaches the ceiling. Passes through it. Vanishes.

Everyone is staring.

"Dr. Jackson -- what just happened?" General Hammond demands.

"Daniel has Ascended, sir," she says. Her voice is hoarse with unshed tears. "He's escaped the trap."

She's still on her knees. Her face is as white as if she were the one who was hit. Her eyes are wide.

He's seen her through some of the worst times in her life. He saw her kill Sha're, lose Skaara. They say it gets easier as you get older. You feel less pain. O'Neill knows it doesn't. It's just like anything else. You get better at it with practice.

You learn how to hurt.

The debriefing follows immediately. That's a given. They cover what happened on the planet -- business as usual, being ambushed by the local _Goa'uld_ , escaping by the skin of their teeth. This time, their luck just ran out. They lost a member of SG-1.

There's imagery from the MALP. The MALP itself was left behind, but it was transmitting until the event horizon collapsed. The moment Jackson was hit is caught on film. He just looks surprised. They always do. Something they can't see hits him in mid-chest leaving a short ragged cluster of impacts. O'Neill sees Jackson stumble, sees himself reach him and fling Jackson's arm over his shoulder and urge him on. What he didn't see then, the MALP camera catches clearly: the blood soaking quickly through the front of Jackson's uniform as he starts to bleed out.

Frasier has examined the clothing Daniel Jackson has left behind, and tells them why. She's found what she thinks must be the cause of death: a handful of stones, apparently driven into Jackson's chest with the force of shrapnel by the near-miss of a Jaffa staff blast.

It could have happened to any of them.

It could have been Indiana making the run for the Stargate.

They go on to what happened in the Gateroom. Indy explains again all she knows about the mechanics of Ascension. That it can only -- so far as Daniel ever knew -- occur at the point of the body's death. That he had a theory that this world was a sort of trap for him, because it was a place he would not seek to leave.

Afterward, Carter asks him to wait. She goes off and comes back with an envelope.

Apparently Jackson left him a letter. The 'In The Event Of' kind. He asked Carter to hold onto it for him. Gave it to her, she says, about a week ago. One for Indy, too. She's already given Indy hers.

He takes it back to his office. Debates a while. Then takes it home with him unopened.

It's long past dark by the time he gets there. He builds a fire in the fireplace, changes clothes. Fixes himself a drink. He lost a member of SG-1 today. Pure chance it wasn't Indy. Or Carter. Or even Teal'c. Finally he picks up the letter. He's ready to read it now.

It's handwritten. The script is very clear. It's short.

_Dear Colonel O'Neill:_

_If you're reading this, then I'm dead. I hope so, anyway. I gave Sam strict instructions. But you can never be sure._

_I think it will be soon. I have a feeling. Call it a hunch. It never pays to leave these things until too late. Take it from someone who's died unexpectedly more than once._

_There are a lot of things I'd like to tell you. Some I think you already know. Some I'm certain that you don't. But they're Dani's to tell you. I hope she will. But the important thing -- the reason I'm writing this -- is that you have to let her know that you love her. She doesn't understand. Sometimes neither one of us is very good at people. You'll need to figure out a way to explain._

_Take care of her. I loved her too._

_Daniel Jackson_

He stares at the letter for a long time, brooding.

#

Daniel left her a letter. Sammy gives it to her before the debriefing. She's been crying. They've both been crying. Nobody should ever have to die. And not somebody they know, have laughed with, eaten dinner with.

Not her lover.

And worse, Sammy wonders if she could have saved him. They're all -- Sammy, Jack, Teal'c -- wondering that. If they could have done anything differently. But in fact, his death was simply an accident. By some hideous fluke, the MALP's cameras caught it, and it's shown in the debriefing. And so she can see (enhanced, slow motion, still-frame) the moment when the Jaffa staff-blast strikes the ground in front of him. The shower of small rocks -- each one about the size of her thumb-joint -- propelled with lethal force into Daniel's abdomen and chest. It was, Janet has explained carefully, like running into a hail of machine-gun fire. There was nothing anybody could have done, even if he had received treatment within seconds.

And in fact, his body shielded Jack from being hit by the same debris.

Nothing anyone could do to prevent it. Nothing anyone could do to save him. The only thing they could have done was not go in the first place. And they didn't know that until they'd gone.

She drives home immediately after the debriefing, the letter beside her on the seat of her Jeep instead of Daniel. Daniel will never be there again. He isn't really dead. He has what he wanted, what he'd hoped for. But she cannot think of it as anything but a death. He is dead to her. She will never feel his touch again.

She reaches home.

Alone.

Solitude -- aloneness -- is something she has courted like the most constant of lovers since her early teens. Something she's always preferred to the company of others.

Not any more. It mocks her now.

She drops the letter and her backpack on her coffeetable, hangs up her coat, automatically starts a pot of coffee. Her apartment reverberates with Daniel's absence.

Never again.

He will never be here again.

And something she has started to learn is gone. Forever silenced. Taken away.

She'd known it would be. Known he would leave. Known he should and must leave. She just hadn't thought it would be so soon. She thought she'd have more warning.

Nothing has hurt this much since she saw her parents dead. Not even seeing Sha're's body on the cold stones. Because she knew she'd saved Sha're. And this feels as if it is killing her.

But the letter remains. And a part of her knows -- insists -- that Daniel is aware -- if not alive -- and happy. Learning new things.

The coffee is ready. She goes and fixes herself a cup. Comes back and sits down on the couch. Picks up the envelope.

It contains several sheets of paper. Handwritten. The letters are Greek, the language is not: a simple double encryption to keep his last words to her private if someone else should see this letter. The occasional word, without an encipherable equivalent, is in English. She reads the whole, as he knew she would, as easily as if it were all in English.

_Dear Dani: If Sam has given you this, then I've made it, I hope, to the Great Path, just as Oma Desala and I originally intended. So today should be a celebration of sorts, though I won't ask you to feel that way just yet. But whether I've made it to Ascension or simply died, I think being gone gives me the right to say certain things to you._

_When I first arrived, I thought your universe was the same as the one I'd left behind, with only one simple change. The longer I've been here, the more I've come to realize how different you all are from my friends. One simple change changes everything. Seeing you together made me realize how much I had loved my friends, and how privileged I had been to know them -- but how different all of your lives were than the ones we'd led. It can make so much of a difference if you'll just let it._

Her lover of slightly less than a month -- and of a lifetime -- has left her a letter. The sort you read after death. Unlike most others, this one is filled with orders, demands, and flat statements -- which he seems to regard -- have regarded when he wrote them -- as unassailable fact. She can't argue with him now.

Or ever again.

He tells her that she is -- that she has always been -- a good person. Has done good in the world. Saved people. Saved lives. That she, that her life, is worth something. That she _did_ open the Stargate. That the only thing one can truly control about their own life is whether to be good or to be evil.

That she has to tell Jack the whole truth.

(That she has to stop picking up strange men in bars.)

That the most subtle trap is baited with desire, as the monk said, and that he knows he could have been happy here, with her. But that it _was_ a trap: neither his world, nor his destiny. But it _is_ her world, and her destiny. He knows that she's content. But she has the same capacity for happiness that he found here, loving her. She should search for her own happiness until she finds it, because anything less would be ... a subtle trap.

She reads his letter, and she cries.

And then she goes to see Jack. She's lost her lover today. But Jack has lost a member of his team.

It's late when she drives up to his house, but the lights are still on. The front door isn't locked. He never locks it until he goes to bed. Usually she knocks. This time she just opens it. He's sitting in the living room in his favorite chair, staring into the fire. End of April, but still cool enough for a fire, especially on nights like these.

He looks up when she walks in, but doesn't say anything. She sits down on the couch. She pats the couch beside her, and he moves over. For a long time neither of them speaks, both staring into the fire, sitting side-by-side.

"He'll be fine," she says.

"He's _dead,"_ Jack answers harshly.

She shakes her head. "He's back where he belongs. On the path to Ascension. He was only a ... temporary loan." She blinks, and feels the tears spatter.

"Don't," Jack says gently.

"He left me a letter, you know."

"Carter told me."

"He wanted me to ... tell you some things. But I can't. Not tonight."

Jack puts an arm around her shoulders. She leans against him. "He left one for me, too," he says.

They sit in silence again.

"Indy ... you know why I can't do what he wants."

#

She pats his knee. It's a gesture curiously reassuring and indifferent all at once; as if she understands the words unsaid and dismisses both the need for them and the possibility that she'd ever want to hear them. It's always been that way between them. They've always been able to pretend they aren't ... what they are.

He knows, then, that she understands what Jackson wanted from him for her. And why he can't do it. Not aloud.

"Jack," she says, "will you wait for me? Until it's time?"

He smiles faintly. "Yes, Indiana. I'll wait."

No more is said.

#

She's watched the images over and over. She shouldn't have a copy of the MALP footage, but she does.

It shows Daniel -- all of them -- running toward the MALP's camera. Shows Daniel take a long step sideways -- still running -- just before the staff-blast hits and the stones spray up.

There's no reason for him to take a step sideways except to step into the path of the stones.

To die.

To escape.

To save Jack.

Only he didn't know the staff-blast was coming. How could he?

#

Three more years.

They save the world a bit. She never goes out to another bar. Not to pick up a stranger, anyway.

Over time, the pain of Daniel's absence-not-death fades to a bearable ache. Just one more of the losses that define her life. That she ever had him at all was a great gift. Unlooked-for. Undeserved.

Healing.

There are such things as wardrobe consultants, and she hires one. She's not really sure what she's supposed to dress like, or for, since she wears her own clothes less than 20 hours a week -- on a good week -- and rarely to her job. The woman talks a lot about 'updating' and 'age-appropriate'. It's a foreign language, and one Dani doesn't know. Under her tutelage, Dani buys tweed and cashmere, linen and Oxford-cloth. Silk. Something called camel hair. She even buys jeans. She's told she's building a classic wardrobe. She hires a personal shopper to keep it current, as she still has no time or desire to shop.

She's happy, because Jack loves her. And because she knows the future is coming. They will reach it, if neither of them dies.

It's enough for her.

Eight years on, Jack makes General, and for almost a year, he's head of the SGC. And then they save the world bigtime: they destroy the _Goa'uld_ Empire once and for all. And Jack is promoted again. To Washington. Head of Homeworld Security.

Cassandra goes off to college. Sammy leaves SG-1 and takes a desk job at Area 51 to help her settle in.

Teal'c goes to ride herd on the new Jaffa Parliament. Leaving Earth, the _Tau'ri_ , the SGC, now that the Jaffa are free and his work is done. The Jaffa are free; the _False Gods_ are cast down. The impossible task he pledged himself to at Jack's side in the dungeon on Chulak has been completed at last, and Teal'c's name will -- or at least ought -- to be remembered forever.

She's all that's left, and has no desire for new teammates. She resigns from SG-1 and takes a desk job. There are books she wants to write. Needs to write. Even though nobody outside the SGC and its satellite organizations will -- probably -- ever read them.

SG-1 is formally decommissioned.

Her last -- her only -- family (now that both Skaara and Kasuf are dead) is going their separate ways at last. She's always known this day would come. She's 36. No longer a child by any reckoning. It's been a long wild ride. Nine years. They've faced Death together, changed the future, the past, the face of the Galaxy, the course of Galactic Civilization. It's time to move on.

It's time.

She takes a leave of absence.

Jack has an apartment at the Watergate. It's only temporary. He's still in the process of moving from Colorado Springs to Washington. Once the house has sold there, he'll be buying one here. He has an office at the Pentagon now. Homeworld Security is a Cabinet-level post. She hasn't told him she's coming. Hasn't told him about her leave of absence. She's a little scared. But to her vast astonishment, he's there to meet her at the airport.

"Still got my spies in the SGC," he tells her.

"Walter?" she asks. Jack grins, saying nothing.

"Damn," she says softly. But she's secretly relieved.

Her flight got in late in the afternoon on a weekday, which does something to explain the traffic and nothing to explain Jack's presence at the airport. She has a hotel reservation at the Airport Hilton and is booked out on a flight tomorrow morning. She's made her plans based on a Worst Case Scenario; if things don't go bad she can just cancel her flight and extend her reservation. The hotel is on her AmEx; she can check in at any time.

"So..." he says. "Leave of absence, Dr. Jackson? What were you planning to do with your time?"

He's got an SUV. More suitable for Washington traffic than a truck, she supposes. They're driving toward the hotel complex. The traffic is worse here than in Cairo.

"I thought," she says carefully, "that I'd spend it in Washington. Because it's time." _If you actually still want me here after what I'm going to tell you._

They go back to his apartment. It's one of the furnished ones, meant for transients, and, though small, is luxurious. And by now -- he's been living here almost a month -- it looks as if a troop of baboons has taken up residence, despite the fact that it comes with maid service. He will, of course, have been doing his best to ward off the maids. Clothes and newspapers are strewn everywhere. Stacks of files. Briefing books. She clears a space on the couch. Sits down.

He drops her carryon bag by the door -- all she brought, not knowing how long she'd be here -- and fixes her a drink without asking, because even after all these years, she really does still hate flying, and he knows it.

And then, drink in hand, she keeps the last of her implicit promises to Daniel, and tells him about Hathor. All about Hathor. Every detail.

He paces. Mentioning Hathor always puts him on edge.

"And I just thought," she says, when everything has been said, her voice faltering just a little now, "that nobody actually needed to know ... that. So I left it out."

#

"You 'left it out'." His voice is toneless.

He'd known that she loved him. He'd just never realized how much. Keeping secrets. She can't lie, but she can keep secrets. He'd known what Hathor did with him. To him. Worse, to think there'd been a witness. A thousand times worse to think it had been Indy. To have it be a part of the official record.

So she'd never said. Never asked for help. Just let it eat away at her inside. Doing her best to scour out the memory with strangers. That stopped after Jackson came.

He knows they were lovers.

"But you told ... Daniel?" he asks.

"In his universe... he was the one she took," she says, offering it as an explanation. "He wanted me to tell you."

He sits down on the couch beside her.

"Does it... Does it make a difference?" Her voice is uncertain.

"No." Yes, but not in any way she's probably thinking of right now. There are words she deserves to hear from him -- not because of this -- but he's never been good with words. Not that kind, anyway.

He takes her hand. "Stay."

"Yes, Jack."

Later he's able to tell her what she already knows. But some things have to be said aloud.

When it's time.

#

She closes her eyes, and when she does, it is not Jack's skin beneath her hands, it is Daniel's.

But Hathor is gone. Vanished from her flesh like the smoke of a divine sacrifice, like the light rising up toward heaven leaving only clothes and blood behind. And Daniel.

It is Daniel who will never leave her now -- or rather, the loss of him. For Daniel is gone. She is sane enough to be able to learn that truth over and over and over again. And so she opens her eyes, and the momentary ghost vanishes just as Hathor's power over her has vanished. Leaving her to love and to be loved, and, in the moment, it is enough.

#

It's a Wednesday. She's been here three weeks.

Actually, she's been back and forth to Colorado Springs twice -- for clothes and (apparently vital) books, and since they're both living in his apartment, things are getting just a little crowded. He's been back to the Springs once, for the closing on the house. With the house gone, the last of his ties to Colorado Springs are severed. He'd moved there with Sara back in the '80s, when his unit had been based out of Falcon AFB. Charlie was born there. Charlie died there. Their lives -- his and Dani's -- are a roll-call of the dead.

He sold the old bike to Carter several weeks ago -- she swore she'd coveted it for years (probably for parts) -- and the truck to Siler on his last trip. Siler will probably run it into a tree the first time the roads are icy. Not his problem. No longer his truck.

Not his SGC anymore, either. It belongs to Hank Landry now. He picked the man out as his successor personally -- the very first of his new duties -- and it was one of the odder sensations of his career to be passing professional judgment on a man who'd been a General since before Colonel Jack O'Neill had known there was a Stargate. But somehow he managed.

It's hellishly early -- a little before six. Workday. Starting with a breakfast briefing, meaning the whole day has to start two hours early.

Washington.

Usually he lets her sleep in the morning, or tries to -- she's not a morning person, he knows that well -- but this morning he was restless. Besides, he doesn't think it entirely fair that she get the idea that his whims are not to be catered to. He's a General, after all. Two stars.

In apology, he's made coffee and brought her the paper.

She seems to take being awake reasonably well. She's sitting up in bed, wrapped up in his discarded bathrobe, drinking coffee and regarding the pages of the _Washington Post_ as if they're a personal enemy.

The hours at the Department are long. And for reasons which continue to baffle and annoy him, the workday doesn't stop at any civilized hour. There are parties which it is advisable -- meaning mandatory -- for the Head of Homeworld Security to attend. For the sake of funding. Gossip. Connections. She always goes with him, though she's hated parties for longer than he's known her. Unless, of course, they're taking place on other planets in primitive cultures, when she's fascinated. No one would guess it to see her at these parties (receptions, dinners, galas, musical evenings) though, her face expressionless and politely inquiring as she performs the strange and slightly-barbaric rituals of an alien species. Dr. Jackson is a great asset to General O'Neill's transition to Washington. Well-groomed, flawlessly poised, infinitely diplomatic. Able to babble on at tedious length to everyone she encounters. In their native languages where appropriate.

An invaluable asset. One he would prefer not to do without at any point in the foreseeable future.

Well, he's always known that. He's known the answers to a lot of the questions he's asked her over the years. Not the one he'll have to ask now. She's getting a little tired of being addressed as 'Mrs. O'Neill' -- either by those who are making a mistake or those who are making a point.

He finds it amusing. And is grateful to have been saved by her presence from the further prospect of being paraded as an 'Available Male.' The young women are tiring and the older ones are far too ambitious, as he found out in his first weeks here. He has absolutely no desire -- zip, zilch, nada -- to be President.

"What are your plans?" he asks.

She regards him, only slightly bleary-eyed. "Going to look at houses."

He's tired of living in a glorified hotel room. His schedule doesn't leave him any time to look at houses. She's taking care of that. He's told her what he wants. No long commute. Something with a yard. She hasn't been having a lot of luck. Even at his current pay-grade, Washington is expensive.

"After that."

She sighs. "Shopping."

He smiles. He can wear the same thing to every occasion. She can't. "I was thinking a little more long-term." But her mind is elsewhere. She's staring at the paper. Probably the real estate section.

"Jack, in the last two weeks I've looked at everything in Georgetown. Either it's outside your price range, or it's too small. Mandy's about ready to shoot me. You've either got to look further out, or..." she shrugs wordlessly. _Compromise._

He's never really been good at that.

"What?" he asks, to bait her.

"Something." She refuses to start a useless argument at six in the morning. He wishes she were on his staff.

"Marry money?" he suggests.

She looks up. He's got her attention at last. "She'd have to be crazy," she says slowly.

" _You_ were committed once." When MacKenzie thought that Stargate travel had driven her insane. "I'm asking you to marry me, Dani. I know it's not the best idea I ever had. And there might be--"

_Something else you'd rather do with your life._

#

"Yes," she says quickly.

"Yes?" Jack sounds faintly puzzled, as if he's not sure what she's agreed to.

"Yes, I'll marry you." Her heart is beating very fast and she feels lightheaded. He's asked her to marry him.

And she's said yes.

She didn't see it coming. She hadn't thought that far ahead. She has no idea how she's going to deal with the changes this will make in her life. She doesn't care.

"What now?" she asks, when he doesn't say anything else.

"Well," Jack says, "first I think I kiss you, and then I think I buy you a ring."

And then they _do_ manage to buy a house in Georgetown after all, because she's got quite a lot saved, and Sammy always said that real estate was a good investment. And with one thing and another, she never _had_ gotten around to buying a house in Colorado Springs.

#

She'd wanted a small quiet wedding.

Not, apparently, possible when someone at Jack's new social level is marrying. He suggests an elopement and she's all for it. But there are political reasons why it's impossible.

Washington. Politics. She wonders how long until he can safely retire.

But SG-1 used to be Earth's first -- and last -- line of defense. Now General Jack O'Neill is the SGC's last line of defense against ... Earth. They have to play the game.

She invites about twenty people -- including, of course, Simon Gardner. Sammy is her Maid of Honor. Teal'c will stand up for Jack. General George Hammond (ret.) is to walk her down the aisle.

There are 600 people at the church -- including the President -- 1000 at the reception -- and the headcounts are so low only because Dani has ridden constant herd on the expert and exclusive wedding planner she's hired to handle everything in correct form (except for the flowers, which will be absent, or silk, to spare her allergies). She's not really sure when a quiet wedding to her oldest friend (or friend of longest duration still living, anyway) turned into 'the Washington social event of the season', but somehow, hideously, it has.

And Jack is, apparently, Lutheran as much as he is anything. That's odd to contemplate. But it means they're off to stand up in front of a Lutheran minister. One with a large enough church.

She doesn't care what ceremony they use. Nick swore he was a pagan so often she thinks she believes it. She knows the rituals for the worship of the gods of Old Egypt and practiced them on Abydos with her family before she really understood who those gods really were. By now she's killed so many gods she's not sure she believes in any of them. A wedding is only another strange archaic rite. After which she will still be Dr. Danielle Jackson. But now, wife of General Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill.

Jack invites Sara. They were both sure she wouldn't come, but he would have felt odd -- he said -- not sending her an invitation. She'd sent him one when she remarried.

To their surprise -- and Dani's secret horror -- she comes. Well, Simon comes too. Dani's day is complete.

She helped negotiate a treaty with the _Goa'uld_ once. That was easier than being involved in this wedding, closing on the house, and moving all of their possessions, his and hers -- into the house once they had it -- all in the same three-month period.

#

"Have we met before?" Sara asks, looking at her curiously. It's the reception. Jack drew the line -- so to speak -- at a reception line, but the whole point of a reception is ... receiving.

Yes, they've met. Nine years ago, in a hospital in Colorado Springs. Dani was in fatigues and hazmat gear. Sara was in hysterics. They weren't introduced.

She glances at Jack.

"I don't think so," he says smoothly.

Sara Tyler-O'Neill-Chambers gets a stubborn dissatisfied look on her face. She was married to Jack for over fifteen years and knows an evasion when she hears it.

"Of course," she says. "I wish you both all the best."

Sara moves away, back to her safe civilian husband. He looks a lot like Jack.

"She doesn't believe you," Dani tells him.

Jack shrugs, unconcerned.

#

There's dancing. Inevitable. She dances first with Jack, who's very bad at it, a reluctant dancer. Next with Teal'c, who is, of course, excellent. General Hammond, of course.

Then Simon.

"Isn't he a little old for you?" Simon says in her ear. Simon, still possessed of Osiris' memories -- and much of his arrogance -- though freed, now, of the _Goa'uld_. Knowing her and Jack. Knowing SG-1.

"No." She actually sort of wishes that Simon hadn't come, though Sammy says that much of weddings are about revenge. And by all of Simon's old criteria, she's won. With this marriage she gains status, respectability, fame (albeit only within a certain small -- though exalted -- circle), and influence. All things she's never really cared about.

She feels Simon sigh. She stifles her own sigh, wishing this day were over, at least the public part of it. Scanning the crowd around Simon's shoulder. Realizing she's searching for someone who cannot possibly be here. Who has never been anywhere, though she's found herself searching for him -- in crowds, in passing strangers -- through the years, her attention caught by the flash of light on a pair of glasses, a certain similarity of form. As if he might come back to finish their interrupted conversation. There's still so much she wants to say to him. To hear him say to her.

Of all the days of her life, he should be here today.

To see her ... happy.

And the music stops, and she walks away from Simon. Back to her husband. Into her life. But she wonders, today most of all, if Daniel thinks of her sometimes, wherever he is.

She hopes he's happy.

#

Daniel is working late again, a passion he indulges with the intensity of a vice. It's at times like this that the SGC is as quiet as it ever gets. Most of the time it sort of ... hums.

He's doing research.

Research doesn't occupy as much of his mind as translation does. The part that isn't occupied in matching up citations or running down citations is free to wander. It's both a good and bad thing for his emotional equilibrium, because some nights his mind wanders down some very odd byways.

Ascension.

Amnesia.

Sometimes he can forget about that lost year almost entirely, settling back into the quiet contentment of work and study that fills his days and his life. But other times, like tonight, the futile need to _know_ obsesses him to the edge of physical pain. He knows what Jack and Teal'c have told him, but he doesn't remember those things. Sometimes not knowing what he did while he was Ascended bothers him.

A lot.

He knows he had power he wasn't supposed to use, knowledge that was supposed to be an end in itself. That he wasn't supposed to ... meddle. That he did. He touched Jack's life, Teal'c's. Sam's and Jonas's. The people of Abydos.

Anyone else?

With infinite labor he's retrieved one or two brief disjointed images here and there, nothing more. All the time from the moment Jacob/Selmak began to heal his dying body until the nomads found him alive once more on Vis Uban, is nothing more than a void measured out by the mourning of his friends. The knowledge of what he did -- must have done -- in all the hours and months between is lost.

He knows he will never remember.

#

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**Author's Note:**

> So I have a well-known tendency to remix my own work. This is a remix of _A Mirror For Observers"_ , where I kept the same characters, but flipped the venue -- here, Daniel goes into Dani's world and has to try to adapt.1 It's early work, where I'm still poking my way around setting canon for the Daniverse (which I do by writing about it; whether this is a bug or a feature only you can say). So it's probably something from early 2007 or so.
> 
> And of course it, too, has a sequel. Fear me.
> 
> ====  
> 1 I liked the Dani/Daniel pairing so much -- and the situation -- that I did it twice more, with _"Shell Game"_ and _"Alternate Ending"_.


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